Feb 222022
 
 February 22, 2022  Posted by at 9:51 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , ,  166 Responses »


Salvador Dali Portrait of Gala with Two Lamb Chops Balanced on Her Shoulder 1933

 

“Joe Biden” Wins World War Three (Kunstler)
How the United States Has Provoked the Ukraine Crisis (Cathey)
Putin Recognizes Donbass Independence as Violence Soars (Lauria)
What Accounts for Putin’s Assertiveness on Ukraine? (Ray McGovern)
How Much The EU Has Destabilised Ukraine (Nuttall)
Donbas or Ottawa? The Dizzying Spiral of Government Violence! (Daniel McAdams)
The Neoliberal War On Dissent In The West (Greenwald)
In The Age Of COVID, We’re Reminded An Unjust Law Is No Law At All (McMaken)
Future UK Covid Waves Will Be Treated With Drugs Not Restrictions (Peston)
The Demise of Restaurants (Ugo Bardi)

 

 

 

 

Australia true Covid stats
https://twitter.com/i/status/1495853869242494983

 

 

 

 

Not okay

 

 

Rogan Maajid Nawaz decentralization

 

 

Canada Military
https://twitter.com/i/status/1495749143142322180

 

 

“His Democratic Party is looking everyday more and more like some hell-borne spawn of Satan bent on wrecking what’s left of the old USA.”

“Joe Biden” Wins World War Three (Kunstler)

Enter Monsieur Macron of France. After two years of antagonizing his countrymen with lockdowns and put-downs, he needs a boost for the national election forthcoming in April. So, he has heroically sued Mr. Putin of Russia for a Ukraine “ceasefire.” Note: the Russians haven’t fired. Anyway, that opened the way for a proposed “summit” meeting between “Joe Biden” and Mr. Putin — when the Russians feel like it. They’re playing it a little coy for the moment, letting the West twist slowly, slowly in the wind. If a summit does happen, what will the two summiteers talk about? Mr. Putin will reiterate that the US and NATO made a solemn promise (in writing) to not expand NATO along Russia’s borderland in 1990 when the Soviet Union fell apart, and y’all reneged on that… and now it stops with Ukraine… really… got it?

“Joe Biden” will not have a coherent response. Maybe he’ll want to talk ice cream flavors or dogs. He is, as the Russians say, not negotiation-worthy, though he can be trotted out for photo ops. But “Joe Biden” needs a big win so he can brag on something in his State of the Union address. His Democratic Party is looking everyday more and more like some hell-borne spawn of Satan bent on wrecking what’s left of the old USA. Everything they’ve done since 2016 has degraded the life of the nation — weaponizing the “Intel Community,” queering a national election, besetting the people with race-and-gender mindfuckery, and inflicting the deadly “vaccines” on the population to “fix” the Fauci-created Covid-19 crisis. Never has the country seen a president so obviously incompetent and unpopular. The people backstage running him like an animatronic automaton are in a panic.

By default, then, the summit meeting will be game-set-and-match, Mr. Putin, only both parties will pretend that it’s some kind of moral victory for “JB,” while Russia gets exactly the terms it seeks: Nord Stream-2 will be completed and Germany will get natgas; there will be no additional stupid sanctions and get rid of the old ones; and the US will close up its CIA shop in Kiev and quit all the pointless antagonism. There will be peace in that corner of the world. And then, on cue, the West’s financial system will implode.

Yes, that’s what is actually going on in the background. That roar you hear is bad credit whooshing out of the banks. It looks like we’re going to get both a ripping inflation and a collapse of equities and assets all at once — with a side-dish of disappearing livelihoods, vaporizing pensions, and sinking standards-of-living. One surmises that all the meshugas over Ukraine was designed as a distraction from the financial disorders now at hand. The news media has faithfully played the Ukraine story to the max while ignoring the growing disarray in North America.

The Toronto Star barely even reported today on the weekend dispersion of truckers in Ottawa — like it never happened… a kind of national hallucination. The big rigs are gone from the streets around Parliament Hill, but one suspects the action isn’t over. Mr. Trudeau’s stupid vaxx mandates are still in place and every passing day more is known about their inefficacy and ghastly after-effects. Nor has the national legislature of Canada voted, as required, in support of the Emergencies Act — meaning that the financial punishments inflicted on the truckers and their supporters was arguably illegal.

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“..a conflict, into which the US and NATO can pour support and implement various measures, economic and financial and, eventually, military against Russia, while blaming the Kremlin for starting it.”

How the United States Has Provoked the Ukraine Crisis (Cathey)

The very simple conclusion that may be drawn from what is occurring is this: our foreign policy elites–Neoconservatives and their zealous followers in both the GOP and the Democratic Party–see Russia as a major obstacle in the continuing process of imposing economic and political control over countries which have heretofore not acceded to their hegemony (i.e., Russia and Hungary). Using NATO as a strategic shell and Ukraine as its frontline player, the Neocon/globalist combine seeks to:

(1) prevent an economic disaster for the US of a functioning Nord Stream II pipeline, which would give Germany and potentially other European countries, a climb off ramp from economic domination by the US (journalist Mike Whitney has written conclusively on this topic in the Eurasia Review); and (2) eventually impose politically a pliant government in Moscow, which has become the chief stumbling block in preventing Neocon globalist hegemony and the realization of “the Great Reset.” Russia, like Hungary, has expelled CIA-infested and Soros-sponsored NGOs which in many locations around the world have incited “color revolutions” to install favorable client governments.

More concretely, the Biden administration and US foreign policy establishment (with congressional Republicans in tow) are accusing Russia of “false flag” operations, or more specifically, accusing the pro-Russian secessionists in Lugansk and Donetsk republics of violent attacks against Ukraine (on civilians, schools, all the usual claimed targets), while in fact it is elements of the Ukrainian military, with American encouragement and technical “advisors” embedded, who are responsible for the shelling and the attacks across the cease-fire line. This is one more example of disinformation strategy, projecting onto the Russians what we are actually guilty of.

Just listen to the braindead Biden essentially mouthing this propaganda line. If warfare breaks out it will be because the US State Department and our agents have impelled the Ukrainians to launch such “false flag” actions, literally forcing the Russians to react and thus producing a conflict, into which the US and NATO can pour support and implement various measures, economic and financial and, eventually, military against Russia, while blaming the Kremlin for starting it.

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“The president of France and the Federal Chancellor of Germany expressed their disappointment with this development. At the same time, they indicated their readiness to continue contacts.”

Putin Recognizes Donbass Independence as Violence Soars (Lauria)

Russian President Vladimir Putin has recognized the independence from Ukraine of two breakaway provinces in Donbass as violence in the region continues to escalate. In Monday evening televised remarks after signing decrees recognizing the independence of Lugansk and Donetsk, Putin denounced the government of Ukraine as “puppets” of the United States. He said: “As for those who captured and are holding on to power in Kiev, we demand that they immediately cease military action. If not, the complete responsibility for the possibility of a continuation of bloodshed will be fully and wholly on the conscience of the regime ruling the territory of Ukraine.” After Putin had spoken by phone earlier on Monday with French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz on Monday, the Kremlin issued this statement:

“The president of Russia said that he intended to sign the relevant decree in the near future. The president of France and the Federal Chancellor of Germany expressed their disappointment with this development. At the same time, they indicated their readiness to continue contacts.” The Duma last week passed a resolution recommending that Putin recognize the provinces’ independence from Ukraine. Putin had resisted for eight years recognizing the independence of the self-declared republics of Lugansk and Donetsk in the Donbass, insisting instead that Kiev implement the 2014-15 Minsk agreements that would have given autonomy to the provinces, while they remained within Ukrainian territory. The decision by Putin effectively declares that the Minsk process is over.

It does not mean at this point, however, that the people of Lugansk and Donetsk are ready to hold a referendum to join Russia or that Moscow is interested in making them part of Russia, as happened in Crimea in 2014. The two provinces declared independence after the 2014 U.S.-backed coup in Kiev that overthrew democratically-elected President Viktor Yanukovych, who fled the violent capital to the Donbass, his base of support, exactly eight years ago today, on Feb. 21, 2014. On the next day Parliament, with only opposition leaders present, impeached him. After anti-Russian language laws were passed by the coup government, hand-picked before the coup by the United States, and after neo-Nazis burned dozens of people alive in a building in Odessa on May 3, 2014, both Lugansk and Donetsk declared independence nine days later on May 12.

The coup government launched a civil war against the separatists, whom they called “terrorists.” In essence the Donbass was defending their democratic rights to vote, as a majority of the region voted for Yanukovych, in an election certified by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). In the eight years since, as many as 14,000 people have been killed in the fighting. The violence from that continuing conflict has soared since Thursday with thousands of ceasefire violations and explosions in and around Lugansk and Donetsk reported by OSCE monitors on the ground.


Putin speech Feb 21

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Xi.

What Accounts for Putin’s Assertiveness on Ukraine? (Ray McGovern)

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s well choreographed decision yesterday to recognize the independence of the pro-Russian Ukrainian provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk points to two key realities: (1) Putin despairs of persuading U.S. allies, Germany and France, to press Ukraine to honor its commitments under the Minsk accords that provide for regional autonomy as well as a ceasefire; and (2) Putin feels assured of very strong backing from China (as long as he is not stupid enough to invade Ukraine). What about this China factor? Why do Western pundits/savants pay so little heed to this game-changer? It should not require my half-century of studying/reporting on Russia-China relations to notice that China and Russia have never been so strategically close as now. Putin and Xi have done their part to demonstrate that. Why cannot most Western pundits and savants see it and recognize the implications?

There are, happily, notable exceptions – for example, Edward Wong’s Bond Between China and Russia Alarms US and Europe Amid Ukraine Crisis. Wong writes of Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi’s speech on Feb. 21 in Munich: “It was the latest instance of what Western officials say is China taking a bold new swing at the United States and its allies by wading into European security issues to explicitly back Russia.” Wong includes quotes from a PR person, Pentagon spokesman John Kirby, and a true expert on China, former prime minister of Australia Kevin Rudd. Kirby: “China’s support for Russia is deeply alarming, and, frankly, even more destabilizing to the security situation in Europe.” Rudd: “China’s explicitly pro-Russian position on European security is new and significant and quite a radical departure from the past.”

Kevin Rudd is right, of course; and it’s nice to know that the Pentagon, too, is aware. Crazed as the generals and admirals have long shown themselves to be, it is questionable whether even they would want to risk war on two fronts with major adversaries – for another star on their shoulder. I recall Amb. Chas Freeman telling me last December, “It is clear that the Sino-Russian entente is expanding under the pressure of US threats to both. Nothing will happen on either Taiwan or Ukraine without coordination between Beijing and Moscow.

That nothing will happen on either Ukraine or Taiwan without coordination between Beijing and Moscow seems to be key to understanding why Putin is feeling his oats. Yesterday, Chas further reminded me that “China agrees with Russia that the US global sphere of influence needs rollback. It does not agree that Ukraine should be invaded, occupied, or annexed. Ironically, China is this century’s citadel of Westphalianism.

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“..after more than a year of protracted negotiations, Yanukovych refused to sign the agreement in November 2013, which set off a chain of events that eventually led to his downfall.”

How Much The EU Has Destabilised Ukraine (Nuttall)

Eight years ago, a democratically elected president was removed from office by protesters waving European Union flags. Viktor Yanukovych had been elected as president of Ukraine in 2010 to serve a five-year term. His time in office was, however, brought to an abrupt end when he was removed for his refusal to sign an association agreement with the EU. The first decade of the 20th century was a golden period for the EU. The euro currency had been launched, the bloc was expanding, and Eurosceptic movements in its existing member states had barely got off the ground. The federalist ideologues in Brussels confidently believed that this was to be the EU’s century, and nothing could prevent it from accruing more powers and expanding further eastwards.

After the accession of central European countries and the Baltic states, Ukraine was the next logical step –highlighted by a vote in the European Parliament in 2005, which floated the possibility of Ukraine eventually joining the bloc. As a consequence, EU cash was poured into Ukraine as a precursor to eventual accession. The first step towards this eventuality was a deepening of economic ties, and to this end an association agreement was initiated in 2012. However, after more than a year of protracted negotiations, Yanukovych refused to sign the agreement in November 2013, which set off a chain of events that eventually led to his downfall.

[..] Now Yanukovych may have been a bad president, but that is not really the point. He was elected to serve a five-year term, and if the electors wanted rid of him, and it seems a sizeable number did, then they could have waited another year and voted him out of office. That is, after all, how democracy works. Nevertheless, with Yanukovych out of the way, the Ukrainian government signed the association agreement with the EU in March 2014. The EU proudly holds itself up as a defender of democracy – although anyone who understands how it really works knows what a contradiction this is – so you would assume that Brussels would have roundly denounced these ugly scenes in Kiev. But no, EU chiefs instead acted as enthusiastic cheerleaders.

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“Even insane San Francisco is in the process of eliminating its mandates, yet somehow Justin Trudeau’s Canada is willing to literally go to war with its own people..”

Donbas or Ottawa? The Dizzying Spiral of Government Violence! (Daniel McAdams)

Will the Russians attack? Well, they’ve been clear for years: a Kiev attack on three-quarters of a million Russian citizens in eastern Ukraine – who because of a Washington coup found themselves ruled by a government that came to power illegitimately – will be met with a Russian military response. In the breathless world of the braindead media hacks, the world began yesterday. But actually we are seeing a situation similar to 2008 in South Ossetia, where Russian passport holders (and Russian OSCE monitors) found themselves under attack by Georgia. The result was lightening fast, effective, and limited. Russia could have held and “regime-changed” Tbilisi. They did not. They made their point and left.

Even the US government-funded RFE had to admit that yes, in fact, it was Georgia that started the hostilities…and Russia that ended them. Will Russia come to the aid of Donbas? Yes. They are not trying to hide it. They’ve been saying it for years . The renowned historian and international relations theoretician Edward Luttwak – never accused of being a political partisan – put it best on Twitter: “The latest IC forecast: war is imminent and Russian forces will rely on exceptionally intense artillery bombardments, of Kiev too. That implies a reckless-gambler Putin, willing to make Ukrainians hate Russia & Russians forever. Neither is congruent with Putin’s record so far.”

This is the difference between astute analysts and the cardboard cut-outs who populate the media. People of intellectual substance like Luttwak are not in the business to grind an axe. They analyze past behavior and seek the truth. Sadly these days we are stuck with the former, with the latter being rarities. Meanwhile in Canada, a liberal Western democracy has declared war – literally – on its own peaceful citizens who have gathered to oppose the absurd continuation of Covid-related mandates. Even insane San Francisco is in the process of eliminating its mandates, yet somehow Justin Trudeau’s Canada is willing to literally go to war with its own people to keep them in place.

What is funny about Canada (and this is also true of the US and many “Western” liberal democracies), is that they are very happy to preach to the rest of the world that peaceful protests must be allowed while literally at the same time brutally cracking down on same protests in their own countries. As in the late Soviet era, the hypocrisy is impossible to ignore. The regime disintegrates under the weight of its own contradictions.

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“The term “dissent,” in Western democracies, connotes legitimacy, so that label must be denied them.”

The Neoliberal War On Dissent In The West (Greenwald)

This last decade of history is crucial to understand the dissent-eliminating framework that has been constructed and implemented in the West. This framework has culminated, thus far, with the stunning multi-pronged attacks on Canadian truckers by the Trudeau government. But it has been a long time in the making, and it is inevitable that it will find still-more extreme expressions. It is, after all, based in the central recognition that there is mass, widespread anger and even hatred toward the neoliberal ruling class throughout the West. Trump, Brexit and the rise of far-right parties in places where their empowerment was previously unthinkable — including Germany and France — is unmistakable proof of that. Rather than sacrifice some of the benefits of inequality that have generated much of that rage or placate or appease it with symbolic concessions, Western neoliberal elites have instead opted for force, a system that crushes all forms of dissent as soon as they emerge in anything resembling an effective, meaningful or potent form.

So many of the controversies over the last decade, often analyzed in isolation, have been devoted to this goal. The pervasive surveillance systems constructed by the West — revealed during the Snowden reporting but only partially reined in at best since then — are crucial tools, as surveillance powers always are, for monitoring and thus stifling dissent. We have now arrived at the point where the U.S. Government and its security state is officially and explicitly clear that it regards the greatest national security threat not as a foreign power such as China or Russia, and not as non-state actors such as Al Qaeda or ISIS, but rather “domestic extremists.” For years, this has been the unyielding message of the DHS, FBI, CIA, NSA and DOJ: our primary enemies are not foreign but are our fellow citizens who have embraced ideologies we regard as extremist.

This new escalation of repression depends upon a narrative framework. Those who harbor dissenting ideologies — and particularly those who do not embrace that dissent passively but instead take action to advocate, promote and spread it — are not merely dissenters. The term “dissent,” in Western democracies, connotes legitimacy, so that label must be denied them. They are instead domestic extremists, domestic terrorists, seditionists, traitors, insurrections. Applying terms of criminality renders justifiable any subsequent acts of repression: we are trained to accept that core liberties are forfeited upon the commission of crimes.

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“..when it comes to protests and other acts of which the regime approves, legality is never an issue.”

In The Age Of COVID, We’re Reminded An Unjust Law Is No Law At All (McMaken)

We could contrast the rhetoric surrounding the trucker protest with that of the Black Lives Matter protests. In the case of the BLM protests, illegal acts were downplayed and ignored, with one obvious riot labeled a “mostly peaceful” protest. when it comes to protests and other acts of which the regime approves, legality is never an issue. The regimes of the world, of course, like to use legality as a standard for judging human behavior because the regimes make the laws. Whether or not the laws actually have anything to do with human rights, private property, or just basic common sense is another matter entirely. Thus history is replete with pointless, immoral, and destructive laws. Slavery has been lawful throughout much of human history. Temporary slavery—known as military conscription—is still employed by many regimes.

In the US, the imprisonment of peaceful American citizens of Japanese descent was perfectly lawful under the US regime during World War II. Today, employers can face ruinous sanctions for hiring a worker who lacks the proper immigration paperwork. Worldwide, people can be jailed in many jurisdictions for years for the “crime” of possessing an illegal plant. During covid, the reality of arbitrary law came very much to the fore when unelected health bureaucrats and lone elected executives began ruling by decree. They closed businesses, shut people up in their homes, and imposed vaccine and mask mandates. Those who refuse to comply—and businesses who refuse to enforce these edicts—are condemned as lawbreakers and subject to punishment.

All of these legal provisions, acts, and sanctions represent mockeries of basic natural rights rather than protections of them. The notion that laws can be perversions of true justice has long been obvious to many. In fact, the disconnect between morality and legality is a fundamental aspect of Western civilization. The basic notion is very old, but the idea’s endurance in the West was reinforced by the fact that Christianity began as an illegal religion and early Christians were often considered to be criminals deserving of the death penalty. It should be no surprise, then, that Saint Augustine declared an unjust law to be no law at all and compared kings to pirates: the decrees of pirates, of course, are not worthy of obedience or reverence. And if kings are like pirates, kingly decrees are of equal respectability. This same tradition fueled Saint Thomas Aquinas’s support for regicide (in certain cases). Needless to say, regicide has been always and everywhere declared illegal by the would-be targets.

Yet, unfortunately, declaring something to be “illegal” remains an effective slur. There is no shortage of people who proudly consider themselves to be blind supporters of “law and order” and who insist “lawbreakers” are axiomatically in the wrong. Their simple-minded refrain is “if you don’t like the law, change it” and many of these people naïvely believe that acts of legislators and regulators somehow reflect “the will of the people” or some sort of moral law. The opposite is often the reality. We could contrast the rhetoric surrounding the trucker protest with that of the Black Lives Matter protests. In the case of the BLM protests, illegal acts were downplayed and ignored, with one obvious riot labeled a “mostly peaceful” protest. when it comes to protests and other acts of which the regime approves, legality is never an issue.

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“..paxlovid and molnupiravir.” Count your blessings.

Future UK Covid Waves Will Be Treated With Drugs Not Restrictions (Peston)

The core of the strategy to deal with another frightening Covid-19 wave will be pharmaceutical and medical interventions rather than lockdowns and restrictions on our lives, the PM will announce this afternoon. But this means laying in stocks of antivirals like paxlovid and molnupiravir, to protect the vulnerable, and that will cost money. And a second source of cost is a testing and surveillance system to catch a new wave early enough to distribute the antivirals. Which is also far from cheap. Hence the dispute this morning between the Treasury and the Deptartment of Health and Social Care. The Treasury seems to have won and Sajid Javid will “reprioritise” from within his existing budget.

A government source confirmed: “A minimum level of response needs to be maintained so that we have the ability to rapidly scale up and deal with future waves through pharmaceutical interventions rather than restrictions – as we did with Omicron.” UPDATE: To keep us safe, and to keep the economy open, there has to be fairly extensive Covid testing, surveillance and genome sequencing regime. Without it, we wouldn’t know if a new and dangerous strain were here, till too late to contain it with antivirals and booster vaccines As I said earlier, this monitoring regime – plus the perceived imperative of maintaining adequate stocks of antivirals – is pricey.

Over the weekend the row between the Department of Health and the Treasury has not been about new money to pay for it, though it was before, but has been a dispute about whether this Covid insurance policy was necessary at all. The Health Secretary Sajid Javid wanted it. Sunak was sceptical. In the end, Javid won this argument and will pay for it by cutting other programmes.

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“the twin impact of depletion and pollution is pushing the Western economy back to what it was a couple of hundred years ago.”

The Demise of Restaurants (Ugo Bardi)

As I said, restaurants have always been a typical middle-class thing. They appeared together with the European middle class, and they are following its destiny. During the past few decades, the middle class has been gradually pushed back into the fold of the lower class. The restaurant business could not avoid being affected by the trend. The tradition of eating out is still alive in the West, but the resources for doing that are not there anymore for a middle class that’s struggling to survive, and failing at that. On their side, the rich don’t eat at restaurants, at least not at the same kind of restaurants that the deplorables can afford. For the very rich and politically exposed persons (PEPs), appearing at a restaurant without an armed escort would be dangerous (*). They have their private cooks and exclusive places. And they socialize with each other throwing expensive parties at their homes. A habit that we find in ancient history, even in Roman times and earlier.

You may have seen the picture of Bill Gates supposedly standing in line waiting for his turn for a burger. It is surprising that many Westerners seem to believe in this kind of cheap PR stunts. In the old Soviet Union, if Leonid Brezhnev had diffused a picture of himself standing in line to buy shoes, people would have laughed themselves to death. But it is known that Westerners are sensitive to propaganda. In any case, the current Western elites are acting just like the Soviet elites of old. They don’t care about what the commoners eat, although they are worried that starving them may lead them to revolt. So, they tend to allow a basic supply of food, but they consider restaurants (and the associated tourism) as a waste of resources. They much prefer to funnel the surplus produced by the economy into their own pockets rather than having it dissipated by the commoners.

They can use several methods to obtain this result: lockdown worked nicely, but could not be imposed forever. Other methods were later used to make the restaurant experience unpleasant for the customers. Different factors reinforced each other. One result of the financial strain is that the quality of the food and of the service is going down (I can testify that myself). Finally, the QR code is the perfect method to keep the deplorables out. It is a more sophisticated and tuneable tool than the old written menu. So, Western restaurants are in the crosshair and it is unlikely that they will survive, at least in the form we are used to seeing them. It is not so much because the PTB are evil — they are no more evil than most categories. It is mostly because the economic contraction coming from the twin impact of depletion and pollution is pushing the Western economy back to what it was a couple of hundred years ago.


a Sumerian QR code to assign rations of beer. Some things never change, some things always return.

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Crowther

 

 

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Feb 042022
 


James McNeill Whistler Nocturne in Black and Gold, the Falling Rocket 1875

 

12 Countries Roll Back COVID Restrictions, Israel Scraps ‘Green Pass’ (CHD)
Israel Will Abolish The Vaxx Passport And Most Testing Requirements (Haa.)
Italy’s Covid Despotism Just Got Worse (Salonia)
What The Omicron Wave Is Revealing About Human Immunity (Nature)
Lethal Mutagenesis As An Antiviral Strategy (Science)
British Children Up To 52 Times More Likely To Die Following A Covid Shot (LSN)
Rejoice! An End To The Dreaded Covid Count… (Hoenderkamp)
Study Offers Strongest Proof Yet Of Vitamin D’s Power To Fight Covid (ToI)
Calls for Help From Families of Patients Hospitalized With COVID-19 (ET)
Justin Trudeau is a Bungler and Menace to His Nation (Kohlmayer)
We Were Warned About the Ports (Sammon)
Spotify Spat Shows Why Joe Rogan And His Podcast Matter (FT)
Can Joe Rogan Save Free Speech? (Turley)
North Korea Hacked Him. So He Took Down Its Internet (Wired)
Reporter Shreds Admin Spox Over ‘Russian False Flag’ Claims (ZH)

 

 

 

 

Lab Leak Conspirancy

 

 

 

 

“..no longer a “socially critical disease.”

12 Countries Roll Back COVID Restrictions, Israel Scraps ‘Green Pass’ (CHD)

Europe is accelerating steps to roll back COVID restrictions as efforts to control the spread of the virus have failed and countries downgrade the threat posed by SARS-CoV-2. Sweden and Switzerland joined Denmark, Norway, Finland, Ireland, The Netherlands, Italy, Lithuania, France and the UK in announcing they will lift COVID restrictions and open up their countries. Top Israeli officials also announced this week they are abolishing the country’s “Green Pass” COVID vaccine passport for restaurants, hotels, gyms and theaters. The policy update will take effect Feb. 6, Prime Minister Naftali Bennet’s government said, pending approval by a parliamentary committee. Israel’s proof-of-vaccination policy will remain in effect for events such as parties or weddings.

“To continue the green pass in the same way can create false assurances,” said Nadav Davidovitch, an epidemiologist and public health physician advising Prime Minister Naftali Bennet’s government. “It’s not reducing infections in closed spaces like theatres. It needs to be used mainly for high-risk places like hospitals, elderly care homes, or events when you are eating and singing and dancing.” Sweden will lift all COVID restrictions by Feb. 9, the Swedish government said today. According to Politico, the Swedish Public Health Agency said it reassessed COVID as “not being socially critical” due to a better understanding of the Omicron variant, which is milder and associated with fewer hospitalizations.

“It’s time to open up Sweden,” said Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson. “The pandemic isn’t over, but it is moving into a new phase.” The decision to open Sweden came a day after Switzerland, citing high immunity levels and the milder Omicron variant, announced it will abolish mandatory work-from-home and the quarantine rules beginning today. The government also will lift health measures at the borders and tourists will no longer need to receive Swiss COVID certificates. The Swiss government said it planned to phase out other restrictions after consulting with 26 cantons, employers, trade unions and parliamentary committees.

[..] Just days before Sweden and Switzerland’s announcements, Denmark became the first country in the European Union to lift all COVID restrictions, reclassifying COVID as an endemic disease. Danish Health Minister Magnus Heunicke on Feb. 1 wrote a letter to the parliament’s epidemiology committee stating COVID was no longer a “socially critical disease.” Based on the recommendations of the committee, the government decided to scrap COVID restrictions. [..] Italy, France, Norway, Lithuania, England and Finland also relaxed restrictions, Bloomberg reported. “We should discuss whether it’s time for us to take a different viewpoint and start unwinding restrictions even with a high number of infections,” Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin told reporters. “I hope that we can be rid of restrictions during February.”

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“..effectively removing barriers to entry for the unvaccinated..”

Israel Will Abolish The Vaxx Passport And Most Testing Requirements (Haa.)

Israel’s coronavirus cabinet decided to abolish its so-called green passport program for most places of entertainment, including hotels, restaurants, gyms and movie theaters, effectively removing barriers to entry for the unvaccinated. The new policy will come into effect on Sunday, and will leave the proof of vaccination in place for events “with significantly greater risk of infection,” such as weddings and parties. The cabinet also decided to scrap the requirement to present a PCR test upon exiting the country. Following recommendations of the Health Ministry, the cabinet further scrapped the expiration date on green passports for anyone who has received a third or fourth dose of the vaccine, meaning those passes would be valid indefinitely.


But for people who have only had two doses, or who recovered from the virus but aren’t vaccinated, the pass will be valid for only four months from the date of the second dose or the recovery. Those who are not fully vaccinated and employed in the education, health and welfare sectors will still be required to undergo biweekly tests. The decisions come in the midst of Israel’s omicron wave, with Prime Minister Naftali Bennett saying that he predicts “one-and-a-half to two hard weeks ahead of us.” [..] Meanwhile, the Health Ministry reported that the R number – the average number of people each coronavirus carrier infects – further declined on Tuesday to 0.92. Any number under 1 indicates that the pandemic is shrinking. The figure is calculated according to data from the previous 10 days.

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“..they are to be allowed access to supermarkets only to buy “goods of primary necessity.”

Italy’s Covid Despotism Just Got Worse (Salonia)

A couple of weeks ago, a new decree of the Draghi government established yet more rules restricting the lives of people who have not been injected with the latest vaccine booster and who therefore cannot show the latest version of the Green Pass. These second-class citizens, who have already been stripped of their right to move, work, and participate in a great number of social activities, are now forbidden from entering post offices to withdraw their pension, and they are to be allowed access to supermarkets only to buy “goods of primary necessity.” In other words, the Italian government decides what kind of food and what other goods (if any) these people will be able to purchase.

Among Western countries, Italy has been one of those experiencing the most systematic denial of basic civil rights over the past two years. Coalition governments led first by Giuseppe Conte and then by Mario Draghi have empowered an unelected committee of “experts” called the Comitato Tecnico Scientifico, which has in turn empowered the governments by assigning a scientific aura to every decree, every action, and every word coming from the executive. This has resulted in an endless series of lockdown measures that for long periods have erased freedom of movement, the right to work, property rights over businesses and shops, freedom to assemble, freedom to worship, and even the distinction of jurisdictional spheres between church and political authority (with state bureaucrats closing churches and then handing out petty instructions on what rites could be carried out, how liturgies should be curtailed, and how many people if any could be present at masses and funerals).

In the meantime, the legislative branch has been humbled, and government by urgent decrees from the executive has become the norm. The very constitutional structure of the country has been bent, and a new concept called “stato di emergenza” (state of emergency) has been invented out of thin air, even though it is nowhere to be found in Italy’s republican constitution. If we were not living in the age of CNN, fake news, and outrageous subsidies handed out by politicians to newspapers and the media, one could legitimately wonder where the journalists were while all this was going on? In fact, journalists in Italy are among the main culprits of the current dystopian reality, since they have given platforms to “experts” who agreed with lockdowns and other measures that expanded government control over all aspects of life, while at the same time they ferociously mocked and ostracized doctors and scientists who dared to question the logic of outdoor mask mandates and curfews for restaurants.

Anybody who dared to point out the disastrous consequences of a prolonged lockdown on mental health and on people suffering from other pathologies, or the link between the economy and public health, was accused of being a “covid denier.” This is a pattern that surely readers recognize, as they have seen it in the US and many other countries over the past two years. The fact that virtually every opinion labelled by the media as “conspiracy theory” has turned out to be true just three or four months later has done nothing to shake the arrogance of the corrupt mass media, who are entrenched in their monopoly over the news cycle, thanks to their access to state funding and political favors. And this is true in Italy as virtually everywhere else.

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Nature Magazine tries hard to find a role for the vaccines. It’s not there.

The vaccines don’t want to help or boost our immune system, they want to take over its role. And that is every bit as bad as it sounds.

What The Omicron Wave Is Revealing About Human Immunity (Nature)

Immune memory depends on more than just antibodies. Even when antibody levels drop, memory B cells can recognize a return invader, divide, and quickly start churning out antibodies to fight it. And the memory B-cell response improves over time, at least in the short term. Six months after vaccination, the individuals in Wherry’s study6 had elevated numbers of memory B cells that responded not only to the original SARS-CoV-2, but also to three other variants of concern. And then there are T cells, the third pillar of immune memory. On coming into contact with an antigen, these multiply into a pool of effector cells that act to wipe out the infection. Killer T cells quickly divide to assassinate infected cells, and various types of helper T cell secrete chemical signals that stimulate other parts of the immune system, including B cells. After the threat has passed, some of these cells persist as memory T cells.


Some people might carry memory T cells from past coronavirus infections — such as those that cause common colds — that can recognize SARS-CoV-2. These cells could help to fight the infection, or even stop it completely. One study7 found that health-care workers who were exposed to SARS-CoV-2 but never tested positive had subtle signs of a response to infection. The researchers hypothesize that cross-reactive T cells shut the infection down before it could take hold. “These people did have an infection in a sort of loosest sense of the word,” says Mala Maini, an immunologist at University College London who led the study. But “there’s probably not much virus around because it’s being shut down very quickly”. This idea is still controversial, and the phenomenon might be rare. Memory cells typically can’t block infection in the way that neutralizing antibodies can, but they don’t necessarily need to.

With COVID-19, infection happens quickly, but it takes a little while to cause serious illness. That gives memory T cells some time to do their jobs. When re-exposed to a virus or booster, these cells will kick into overdrive, “proliferating like crazy”, Crotty says. “In a 24-hour period, you can get a tenfold increase in the number of your memory T cells.” That’s probably not fast enough to have much of an effect on getting sick, he adds. But it could be fast enough to prevent hospitalization. And it’s much harder for the virus to find a way around the T-cell response. That’s because T cells in one individual recognize different parts of the virus than do T cells in another individual. So a virus could mutate to escape one person’s T-cell response, but not another’s. “Escape is meaningless at the population level,” Crotty says. Also, T cells can see parts of the virus (or the spike protein) that antibodies can’t, including pieces that are less likely to mutate.

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More on RNA potential to change DNA, via reverse transcriptase. Don’t be a guinea pig.

Lethal Mutagenesis As An Antiviral Strategy (Science)

There is a gap in our knowledge in scaling short-term lab-based assays (using bacteria, animal cells, and animal models) for mutagenic activity with long-term risk to human health. Mutagens that are incorporated during cellular DNA synthesis are problematic for a developing fetus (where cells are undergoing rapid division), male germline cells (which continue to divide throughout life), and cancer risk (where the small fraction of human cells that are dividing have the potential to incorporate a mutation that could contribute to cancer development). Humans are exposed to mutagens throughout life—for example, DNA mutations are induced by x-ray imaging or during air travel—so there are levels of DNA damage that are considered to be largely inconsequential.


If the molnupiravir metabolite NHC really is a mutagen in dividing animal cells, how should negative data in an animal model be interpreted? Are such negative data sufficient to ensure long-term safety in humans, or does the lack of knowledge about the link between negative results in animal assays and long-term outcomes in human health need to be acknowledged? Molnupiravir use will come with some restrictions around short-term risks associated with reproductive health, but it may take years before potential long-term risks are understood. The best outcome, which is the assumption from the negative results in animals, is that molnupiravir treatment falls within the background level of exposure to mutagens that humans already experience and tolerate. The half-life of molnupiravir metabolites in human tissue is unknown.

[..] Molnupiravir has the potential to lower the disease burden of SARS-CoV-2 infections and help contain future emerging RNA viruses. However, how can its potential long-term effects as a mutagen be assessed? The following steps are suggested: Treatment should be restricted to those who will benefit the most, such as those who cannot tolerate other available treatments, those who have a preexisting condition that enhances the risk of COVID-19, and those who are more than 50 years of age and would be less affected by a potential long-term risk of cancer or reproductive risks. A registry of a cohort of people who received molnupiravir should be kept to longitudinally monitor the frequency of cancer and other potential outcomes so that the opportunity to understand the risk (or lack thereof) associated with the use of a mutagenic ribonucleoside as an antiviral is not missed.


Strategies to limit metabolism of mutagenic analogs from the ribonucleotide pool into the 2′ -deoxyribonucleotide pool should be explored to limit the potential DNA mutation load in the host. In addition, the viral population diversity should be evaluated after treatment with molnupiravir in those who fail to clear the virus to see whether the treatment accelerates viral evolution. Lethal mutagenesis has the potential to be an important antiviral strategy for RNA viruses, especially in emerging infections when there is an absence of virus-specific antivirals. The potential of this strategy should be exploited, but the possible risks should be acknowledged and addressed.

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Hmmm. A bit skeptical. The ONS provides stats in 100,000 person-years instead of 100,000 population, and for good reason, but what do they mean when numbers are very low?

British Children Up To 52 Times More Likely To Die Following A Covid Shot (LSN)

In December, the ONS published age-standardized data on the mortality rates of individuals in 5-year age sets in Britain, grouped by their “vaccination” status for the COVID-19 shots. The data accounts for the period from January 1 to October 31, 2021. The ONS tabulated “Monthly age-standardised mortality rates by age-group and vaccination status for deaths involving COVID-19, per 100,000 person-years” but presented the data only for ages 18 and over. However, the jabs are available to children as young as 12, and those children are allowed to receive the shot against their parents’ wishes. In limited cases, children as young as 5 have been given a reduced dosage of the shots.


Nevertheless, as noted by The Exposé, a separate table outlining “deaths and person-years by vaccination status” includes 5-year age groups from 10-years-old and up. From the data provided, a calculation of the mortality rate per 100,000 person-years can be made. The rate per 100,000 person-years delineation is used in preference over the simpler 100,000 population calculation to better represent the mortality rates over a specific period of time, as people in one “vaccination” group – such as un-jabbed, single-jabbed, and double-jabbed – soon move into the next group.

[..] the 100,000 person-years calculation can be made, with the younger group coming out at 20.9 un-jabbed per 100,000 person-years and the older group at 15.9. Following this, the mortality rate per 100,000 person-years is worked out by dividing the number of deaths within each group by the 100,000 person-years calculation. The result is that for the 10-14 year group, the un-jabbed mortality per 100,000 person-years is 4.6 while the un-jabbed mortality rate per 100,000 person-years for the 15 19 group is 10.1. Using the same data set and calculation, the mortality rate for 10-14-year-olds who received one dose of the jabs suffered a 45.1 per 100,000 person-years death rate, while 15 19-year-olds with one jab suffered 18.3 deaths per 100,00 person-years.

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[..] the 15 per cent recorded when the death rate was at its peak in May 2020.. [..] by Tuesday the CFR had fallen to 0.19 per cent…

Rejoice! An End To The Dreaded Covid Count… (Hoenderkamp)

The Government last month signalled its intention to scrap the legal requirement for infected people to self-isolate on March 24, and yesterday it was claimed that it will stop releasing daily Covid updates in April. To which I say ‘Rejoice!’ – but why can’t we end both practices today? And, while we’re about it, stop testing too. If you think such a course sounds alarmingly precipitate, allow me to explain why there is no need to delay a moment longer. The truth is that the advent of the highly infectious (although markedly milder) Omicron variant has changed everything. Last week the Case Fatality Rate (CFR) – the proportion of infected people who died of Covid – was hovering at around 0.95 per cent.


That is way below the 15 per cent recorded when the death rate was at its peak in May 2020 when testing was minimal. And since Monday, when the Office For National Statistics included ‘reinfections’ – people who have contracted the virus more than once – on its daily Covid dashboard for the first time, the CFR has plummeted still further. With the addition of hundreds of thousands of cases to the weekly total, by Tuesday the CFR had fallen to 0.19 per cent, a percentage akin to that of flu, an illness which currently has a fatality rate of between 0.1 and 0.2 per cent. The average age of death from Covid, meanwhile, remains at the pre-pandemic 82, with data from the US showing that 75 per cent of people who die with Covid have no fewer than four underlying serious conditions.

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Oh c’mon, we need to study that? “We found it remarkable, and striking..” says a doctor. How many lives were lost?

Study Offers Strongest Proof Yet Of Vitamin D’s Power To Fight Covid (ToI)

Israel scientists say they have gathered the most convincing evidence to date that increased vitamin D levels can help COVID-19 patients reduce the risk of serious illness or death. Researchers from Bar Ilan University and the Galilee Medical Center say that the vitamin has such a strong impact on disease severity that they can predict how people would fare if infected based on nothing more than their ages and vitamin D levels. Lacking vitamin D significantly increases danger levels, they concluded in newly peer-reviewed research published Thursday in the journal PLOS One. The study is based on research conducted during Israel’s first two waves of the virus, before vaccines were widely available, and doctors emphasized that vitamin supplements were not a substitute for vaccines, but rather a way to keep immunity levels from falling.

Vitamin D deficiency is endemic across the Middle East, including in Israel, where nearly four in five people are low on the vitamin, according to one study from 2011. By taking supplements before infection, though, the researchers in the new Israeli study found that patients could avoid the worst effects of the disease. “We found it remarkable, and striking, to see the difference in the chances of becoming a severe patient when you are lacking in vitamin D compared to when you’re not,” said Dr. Amiel Dror, a Galilee Medical Center physician and Bar Ilan researcher who was part of the team behind the study. He noted that his study was conducted pre-Omicron, but said that the coronavirus doesn’t change fundamentally enough between variants to negate vitamin D effectiveness.

“What we’re seeing when vitamin D helps people with COVID infections is a result of its effectiveness in bolstering the immune systems to deal with viral pathogens that attack the respiratory system,” he told The Times of Israel. “This is equally relevant for Omicron as it was for previous variants.” [..] In June, researchers published preliminary findings showing that 26 percent of coronavirus patients died if they were vitamin D deficient soon before hospitalization, compared to 3% who had normal levels of vitamin D. They also determined that hospitalized patients who were vitamin D deficient were 14 times more likely, on average, to end up in severe or critical condition than others.

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Attorney’s advice: “Stay out of the hospital, no matter what.”

Calls for Help From Families of Patients Hospitalized With COVID-19 (ET)

Attorney Esther Bodek in Aurora, Colorado, also knows of a patient’s family members who were arrested when communications with a hospital went sour. She says requests from families of COVID-19 patients have flooded in since November. “It’s traumatizing,” Bodek said, “because it is a level of civil rights abuses that I have never encountered in my entire life.” In case after case, she’s seen a pattern of separating COVID-19 patients from their families and restricting visitation. “And during that period of time is usually when the remdesivir is administered.” Some families coming to her for help often strenuously object to treatment with remdesivir. When other treatments have failed, they desperately want to try things the hospital won’t allow, such as ivermectin and vitamins.

Those are part of a popular protocol used by independent doctors around the country and by people treating themselves at home. Bodek has fought many times to obtain those medications as a last-ditch effort to save a patient. She said the resistance she faces when dealing with the hospitals is maddening. “Any question about treatment starts immediate combativeness [by hospital staff], from what I’ve seen in the pattern of our cases,” she said. She’s had clients denied fluids and nutrition to the point of near-starvation. Since taking those cases she works night and day seven days a week. On the weekend, “I’ll be on the phone and talking to somebody in tears,” she said. “The hospital’s telling them they want to pull the plug and they’re trying to make a decision.

The doctor says, ‘We’re going to take him off life support now.’ And I’ve had to say ‘No! That’s not their choice!’” One of her clients works in billing in a hospital and told her that hospitals receive a bonus payment of $17,000 from the federal government for every patient confirmed to have COVID-19, Bodek said. A bonus payment of $37,000 is paid for any patient going on a ventilator, according to that client, Bodek said. [..] Bodek’s advice: “Stay out of the hospital, no matter what. And if it happens that you’re admitted, have a medical power of attorney immediately written up to say no to remdesivir.” She’s looking into filing civil rights violations lawsuits if claims of medical malpractice won’t work. “I’m determined to find a way to stop this abuse,” Bodek said. “This is definitely a fight we’re not giving up.”

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Vaccine Insanity Syndrome (VIS).

Justin Trudeau is a Bungler and Menace to His Nation (Kohlmayer)

At the beginning of January, Justin Trudeau, the Prime Minister of Canada, posted a message on Twitter in which he announced that he had just received his Covid vaccine booster and urged others to do likewise. At the end of January, Justin Trudeau posted a message on Twitter in which he announced that he had tested positive for Covid-19. Astoundingly, at the conclusion of his message Trudeau urged everyone to get the shots even though they failed to protect him from the disease. “Everyone, please get vaccinated and get boosted,” he insisted. Trudeau’s message shows the depth of irrationality – bordering on insanity – to which many have fallen victim. We propose to call this phenomenon the Vaccine Insanity Syndrome (VIS).

Those who suffer from VIS have largely lost touch with reality and things like common sense, evidence and logic no longer gain any traction in their thinking. Just to summarize the absurdity of the whole situation: Having been previously vaccinated, Trudeau gets additionally boostered and three weeks later contracts Covid-19. To put it in a different way, shortly after getting his third shot, Canada’s Prime Minister falls ill with the very disease against which these “effective” injections were supposed to protect him. But rather than repenting of his mistake, he goes on Twitter and advises the Canadian people to do the same. Where is any logic in this? Has Covid affected Trudeau’s brain? Or was it the injections that somehow diminished his capacity for thought and reflection?

If anything, Trudeau should be “Exhibit One” for why people should not get vaccinated and boostered, since he is now Canada’s poster boy for vaccine failure. Why, then, is he telling Canadians to do what he did? It cannot be because the vaccines and boosters will protect them against infection. The opposite is, in fact, the case. The data coming from all over the world is showing that the vaccinated are more likely to become infected than the unvaccinated. According to Steve Kirsch, “The numbers in the Denmark study described below are now confirmed by government data from Germany showing that vaccinated people are 8X more likely to develop Omicron than unvaccinated people. This is not surprising since a paper from Germany showed the same thing: the more you vaccinate, the worse it gets.”

Justin Trudeau, however, does not have to go to foreign lands to learn of vaccine failure. Below is a chart from Ontario which gives case numbers according to vaccination status. You will notice that the numbers for the fully vaccinated are more than three times those of the unvaccinated.

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“It took Columbus less time to cross the Atlantic..”

We Were Warned About the Ports (Sammon)

In July 2015, the Federal Maritime Commission, a federal agency with little name recognition and even less influence, released a report sounding the alarm about the state of America’s ports. A congestion crisis had been building for years and was fast becoming untenable; even the country’s relatively tepid economic-growth rate was straining against decades of disinvestment at its most critical trading hubs. Chassis weren’t available, trucks couldn’t get in or out, and terminals stayed perpetually clogged. That crisis had “resulted from events that have developed or emerged over a considerable period of time and from within the system itself, rather than being the result of external shocks, such as unanticipated surges in container volumes or management-labor issues,” the report surmised.

“Many seem to think it is inevitable that embracing ‘business as usual’ will lead to significant further declines in the performance of the U.S. intermodal transportation system.” And then, of course, business went on as usual. Almost five years passed before the coronavirus announced itself on American shores, and another year after that before the disease gave an already fissured supply chain the nudge it needed to fully rupture. And while the circumstances of a global pandemic, its shutdowns and labor shortages, seemed exceptional, it was something as routine as a double-digit import growth, feared specifically by the FMC since at least 2006, that sent shipping container volume skyrocketing and brought the system to a grinding halt. A prophecy that few heard and no one heeded had finally come true.

Before the Biden administration was even sworn in, the ports were already in a state of chaos. It got worse throughout the year, and by the time the administration appointed its ports czar John Porcari and began looking toward emergency intervention, only minor measures were even available to remedy decades of bipartisan mismanagement. Today, congestion at the twin ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, collectively the nation’s largest, is “at historic high levels,” as the shipping giant Maersk announced in a customer advisory in late December. Reporting indicated that there were 133 vessels en route to San Pedro Bay, with delays stretching upward of 41 days. One ship in particular had left Busan, South Korea, on November 17 and was not scheduled to dock until January 2, a 47-day duration for a routine voyage that should take, at most, half that time. “It took Columbus less time to cross the Atlantic,” said Sal Mercogliano, an associate professor and maritime historian at Campbell University.

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Jemima Kelly’s FT ed. tries to defend Rogan, but what’s this?:

“..when he is wrong, he admits it, as he did recently when his claim that young people were at greater risk of developing myocarditis after the vaccine than they were after contracting Covid was swiftly corrected by a guest on his show..”

Spotify Spat Shows Why Joe Rogan And His Podcast Matter (FT)

The contrast between the vague virtue-signalling of the Sussexes’ statement and Rogan’s engaged response — which seemed authentic, humble and searching — shows why his show has become Spotify’s most popular podcast. With an estimated 11mn listeners per episode, the 54 year-old comedian and mixed martial arts commentator must be considered one of the most influential media figures in the world. With that power comes moral and intellectual responsibility and Rogan does not always seem totally aware of that. He was perhaps not mindful enough of the potential impact on his mainly young fans when he casually declared that if a fit and healthy 21-year-old asked him whether to get vaccinated, he would tell them not to.

He also gets his facts wrong sometimes, despite asserting them confidently. But when he is wrong, he admits it, as he did recently when his claim that young people were at greater risk of developing myocarditis after the vaccine than they were after contracting Covid was swiftly corrected by a guest on his show. One should not imagine that if Rogan were shut down, we would be rid of anyone wanting to pursue ideas that run against the grain. Nor should we want such a world — as Rogan points out in his video, some things once dismissed as conspiracy theories, such as the lab leak theory of Covid-19’s origins, are now considered plausible. Conspiracy theories did not spring into being with the arrival of podcasts or the internet — Gallup polling suggests that in 1976, 81 per cent of Americans believed there had been a conspiracy to kill John F Kennedy, contrary to the official line.

It is surely healthier, then, to have someone like Rogan willing to discuss controversial opinions with those who hold them than to confine these people to a corner of the internet where they are less visible but also less easy to correct when they are wrong. That’s quite apart from the fact that it would be utterly ineffective for Spotify to oust Rogan. The idea that the company gives him a platform that he would otherwise lack is fanciful. When Spotify reportedly paid more than $100mn for the exclusive rights to Rogan’s podcast in 2020, it was so as to benefit from the platform he already had.

I told a friend that I might write about Rogan in my column this week. The response I got was “Oh, God!” and a grimace, quickly followed by a confession that she had actually never listened to his podcast. The truth is that many of the people castigating Rogan haven’t either. If they had, they would know that the presenter is an open-minded host who seeks out all sorts of opinions rather than blindly following those of a particular tribe, and who seems genuinely keen to pursue the truth. Joe Rogan doesn’t need Spotify, but Spotify needs him; maybe we all do.

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“Trust in the media has fallen to just 46 percent and as low as 40 percent in recent polling. Where are people going for information? It seems many have gone to podcasts — and specifically to Joe Rogan, at least 11 million of them.”

Can Joe Rogan Save Free Speech? (Turley)

[..] social media companies and other corporations now regulate speech in the United States to a degree that an actual state media would struggle to replicate. Faced with a growing cancel culture, companies are scrubbing their platforms of dissenting viewpoints and converting forums into echo chambers. In the use of private companies, the left has achieved an ignoble distinction. While liberal writers and artists were blacklisted and investigated in the 1950s, liberal activists have succeeded in censoring opposing views to a degree that would have made Sen. Joe McCarthy (R-Wis.) blush. Rather than burn books, they have simply gotten stores to ban them or blacklist the authors.

For these companies, there is no value to protecting the speech rights of dissenting voices with powerful politicians, academics, and even some in the media demanding more censorship. But then they went after Rogan. Rogan’s popularity is precisely due to the fact that he is uncensored in what he says. As many networks and newspapers have become more of an echo chamber, viewers and readers have fled en masse. Trust in the media has fallen to just 46 percent and as low as 40 percent in recent polling. Where are people going for information? It seems many have gone to podcasts — and specifically to Joe Rogan, at least 11 million of them. While Young reportedly relies on Spotify for 60 percent of his royalty income, Spotify does not rely on Young or other rock stars for its primary profits. It is the reverse of market conditions from just a couple years ago.

The problem with controlling speech is that it has to be complete; it doesn’t work if there are alternatives to echo-chambered media. Rogan’s podcast is one of the biggest. With 11 million listeners, he surpassed cable and network audiences as well as the readership of the largest papers. His program allows people across the political spectrum to speak freely, including those who question official positions on vaccines and treatments. While Rogan has promised to be more careful in how information is presented on his show (and Spotify will add “advisories” on podcasts), his podcast survived the celebrity onslaught. As various investors seek to create free speech alternatives to Twitter and YouTube, there may be an emerging market for free speech products.

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North Korea doesn’t have much internet. But still funny.

North Korea Hacked Him. So He Took Down Its Internet (Wired)

For the past two weeks, observers of North Korea’s strange and tightly restricted corner of the internet began to notice that the country seemed to be dealing with some serious connectivity problems. On several different days, practically all of its websites—the notoriously isolated nation only has a few dozen—intermittently dropped offline en masse, from the booking site for its Air Koryo airline to Naenara, a page that serves as the official portal for dictator Kim Jong-un’s government. At least one of the central routers that allow access to the country’s networks appeared at one point to be paralyzed, crippling the Hermit Kingdom’s digital connections to the outside world.

Some North Korea watchers pointed out that the country had just carried out a series of missile tests, implying that a foreign government’s hackers might have launched a cyberattack against the rogue state to tell it to stop saber-rattling. But responsibility for North Korea’s ongoing internet outages doesn’t lie with US Cyber Command or any other state-sponsored hacking agency. In fact, it was the work of one American man in a T-shirt, pajama pants, and slippers, sitting in his living room night after night, watching Alien movies and eating spicy corn snacks—and periodically walking over to his home office to check on the progress of the programs he was running to disrupt the internet of an entire country.

Just over a year ago, an independent hacker who goes by the handle P4x was himself hacked by North Korean spies. P4x was just one victim of a hacking campaign that targeted Western security researchers with the apparent aim of stealing their hacking tools and details about software vulnerabilities. He says he managed to prevent those hackers from swiping anything of value from him. But he nonetheless felt deeply unnerved by state-sponsored hackers targeting him personally—and by the lack of any visible response from the US government. So after a year of letting his resentment simmer, P4x has taken matters into his own hands. “It felt like the right thing to do here. If they don’t see we have teeth, it’s just going to keep coming,” says the hacker. [..] “I want them to understand that if you come at us, it means some of your infrastructure is going down for a while.”

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You’re inclined to say: EPIC! But it’s really just what every reporter should do every single time.

Reporter Shreds Admin Spox Over ‘Russian False Flag’ Claims (ZH)

Earlier on Thursday the Biden administration and US intelligence came out with some explosive and outlandish claims, saying Russia is planning to release a video depicting graphic scenes of a “staged false explosion with corpses, actors depicting mourners, and images of destroyed locations and military equipment,” as CNN described it. This in order to justify a military invasion of Ukraine, given the false flag operation would feature Russian-backed separatists under attack by Ukrainian forces. Given such a narrative has been advanced in public, grabbing global headlines, but without so much as a shred of evidence – even mainstream media pundits are scratching their heads. Watch Associated Press writer Matt Lee demolish the State Department’s Ned Price, who refuses to provide any level of proof backing the bizarre and surprising claims. “This is like Alex Jones territory you’re getting into now!” Lee points out…


Peace?

[..] “Lee challenged Price, saying the State Department had presented “no evidence” that Russia has actually created a “crisis actor” video and insisting that he wouldn’t be satisfied with the administration’s claims alone. “If you doubt the credibility of the U.S. government, of the British government, of other governments and want to, you know, find solace in information that the Russians are putting out, that is for you to do,” Price responded.” Lee then pointed that given the extraordinary claims, some level of evidence is demanded given the mounting numbers of whopping government lies over the past two decades, including ‘Iraq WMDs’.


Price hid behind the “that’s classified” classic line often used whenever government officials want to shut down legitimate skepticism of their claims… “Like, ‘crisis actors’? This is Alex Jones territory you’re getting into,” he said. “Where is the declassified information?,” he repeated multiple times.In pressing for evidence to justify the administration’s claims, the veteran reporter referenced numerous U.S. intelligence failures that led to catastrophe in recent decades, including the “weapons of mass destruction” speculation that served as a pretext for America’s 2003 military intervention in Iraq as well as the U.S. timeline for Afghanistan’s fall to the Taliban that was totally upended in August.

@StateDeptSpox
https://twitter.com/i/status/1489374971948376064

“We’re declassifying evidence Government X may try to misinform you”
“What’s the evidence you’re declassifying?”
“I just gave you the evidence”
“Uhhh, you just made a statement, that’s not evidence”
“If you don’t trust my bizarre claims, something is wrong with you”

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steroidbanking

 

 

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Dec 252021
 


Vincent van Gogh Field with Flowers near Arles 1888

 

Vaccines Must Be Given Monthly To Be Effective Against Omicron (Kirsch)
Vaccine Effectiveness Against Infection With Omicron Or Delta (Alexander)
Resist. The Time is Now. (Malone)
Over 150,000 Americans Killed By The Covid Vaccines (Kirsch)
Reindeer Games (Kunstler)
Lies Damn Lies and Hospitalisation Statistics (Bendell)
Molnupiravir Is Good At One Thing — And That’s What Makes It Scary (WaPo)
Stricter Guidelines: Housemates, Young Children In Quarantine For 10 Days (AD)
There Are So Many Elephants In The Room (Rigger)
Football Icon Accused Of ‘Encouraging Vaccine Suspicion’ Over Heart-scare Cases (RT)
The End of The Pandemic Will Not Be Televised (BMJ)
Those Nasty Russians (John Kiriakou)
Bad Faith, Worse News, and Julian Assange (Snowden)

 

 

 

 

Biden LGB

 

 

The study we discussed yesterday, updated.

Vaccines Must Be Given Monthly To Be Effective Against Omicron (Kirsch)

I want to tell you what this really means and how it is being attacked. This paper means we will need to inject people every 30 days if we want to “protect” them. Based on what the vaccines do to our immune system, it’s likely that the needed interval will shorten with each booster. If people don’t get boosted as required, they will be MORE vulnerable to Delta and Omicron than if they weren’t vaccinated. That’s what NEGATIVE vaccine efficacy means. It doesn’t mean the protection wears off (like we were told). It means the OPPOSITE of what you were told: it means the vaccines helps the virus to infect you (by suppressing your immune system, probably permanently each time we are injected according to Dr. Ryan Cole). It means we were lied to.


In short, the vaccine is like a heroin addiction: once you’ve had a taste of it, you are hooked: you have to continue it for life if you want protection. If you stop it, you’re a sitting duck for the virus. What’s worse is our government is mandating this now. In light of this paper, they will change the vaccine mandates to force you to get vaccinated every month or you will be fired from your job. Their next move could well be to make it illegal not to be vaccinated. This seems like where things are headed based on what is happening in other countries where they are quickly stripping away your rights to do anything without a vaccination. And we have no clue what monthly (and later weekly) vaccination will do to your body. This has never been tested. My advice is simple. If you have been vaccinated, you need to stop now. Do not get the booster.

[..] Negative VE means the vaccine is helping the virus, not you. So at 60 days, the protection is close to zero, so if you want to maintain protection, getting vaccinated every 30 days is required. This isn’t a vaccine at all. This is basically stimulating your immune system so it is already “geared up” to fight the virus. That’s not what a vaccine is supposed to do. Furthermore, the negative VE after 90 days means you are hooked for life and I would guess (based on the mechanism of action), that we will need shorter and shorter dosing intervals for every booster you get (since it kills off your immune system every time). So it could very well be monthly boosters after the 2nd dose, weekly boosters after the 3rd dose, and perhaps daily boosters after the 4th dose to maintain your “immunity.” You can’t stop after that because if you stop, you’re in worse shape than if you never started.

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Dr. Paul Alexander about the same study.

Vaccine Effectiveness Against Infection With Omicron Or Delta (Alexander)

The key statement is: “VE against Omicron was 55.2% initially following primary BNT162b2 vaccination, but waned quickly thereafter. Although estimated with less precision, VE against Omicron after primary mRNA-1273 vaccination similarly indicated a rapid decline in protection. By comparison, both vaccines showed higher, longer-lasting protection against Delta.”

This is a devastating finding…in other words, the vaccine that has failed against Delta is even far worse for Omicron…see table and see figure below table…see where the green dot is (Omicron variant) in the vertical lines (blue is Delta) and the 2 edges of the bars (upper and lower lips) 91 days out for Omicron (3 months)….both Pfizer and Moderna show negative efficacy for Omicron…both below the ‘line of no effect’ or ‘0’…a devastating blow for both but catastrophic for Omicron…

The performance in this paper would get another vaccine pulled for the threshold efficacy was 50%…again, something other than science is at play with all things COVID and these vaccines. Moreover, despite these catastrophic results, they call for more failed vaccine, “In light of the exponential rise in Omicron cases, these findings highlight the need for massive rollout of vaccinations and booster vaccinations.” I need to pinch myself sometimes.

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“..the US HHS and other western regulatory authorities have succumbed to regulatory capture by Big Pharma.”

Resist. The Time is Now. (Malone)

If there has been one constant throughout these last two years, it has been the gross mismanagement and incompetence of government officials tasked with the public health response. How can we trust them to make intelligent, data-based decisions in the future? How can you trust them to decide what is best for your children? No, you have to personally own these decisions now. They will not be there to help if you or your child are damaged by these vaccines. And you will get no legal or financial relief. Both Pfizer and governments have been absolved of all legal accountability. You will have to bear that burden, financially and psychologically, for the rest of your life and that of your child.

In short, the issues here are much larger than just the specific examples of data manipulation, propaganda, censorship, advanced character assassination techniques, misrepresentation of the safety and effectiveness of these genetic vaccines, and suppression of the early treatment protocols empirically developed and tested by front line physicians from all over the world. Among the many unanticipated blowbacks will be lasting damage, not just to overall public trust in government, but to the pharmaceutical industry in the United States. What will happen is that the world will turn to India and China for pharmaceuticals and vaccines. Because the US HHS and other western regulatory authorities have succumbed to regulatory capture by Big Pharma.

What were previously globally trusted regulatory organizations have been corrupted due to the undue influence of the pharmaceutical industry that they were designed and intended to both promote and to regulate. The growing pharmaceutical industries of India and China have cost and performance advantages relative to the United States, UK and Europe, and will now be able to legitimately claim equivalence or superiority in quality and safety. But from the point of view of globalized transnational capital, this is largely irrelevant. Because the concept of nation-state is considered by those who manage these large pools of capital to be outdated, antiquated, and inefficient. This works just fine for Big Capital, because migration of the pharmaceutical industry to India and China will enable the transnational funds to extract more profit, and a greater return on investment.

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“..for 220M fully vaccinated, it’s 10,000 lives saved, but 150,000 or more people killed. So we kill 15 people to save 1. And we mandate it to boot.”

Over 150,000 Americans Killed By The Covid Vaccines (Kirsch)

A new independent study using analysis of excess deaths showed that our estimate of the number of excess deaths was consistent with what they found. Here are some quotes from the paper:

1/ Results from fitted regression slopes (p<0.05 FDR corrected) suggest a US national average VFR of 0.04% and higher VFR with age (VFR=0.004% in ages 0-17 increasing to 0.06% in ages >75 years), and 146K to 187K vaccine-associated US deaths between February and August, 2021.

2/ Comparing our estimate with the CDC-reported VFR (0.002%) suggests VAERS deaths are underreported by a factor of 20, consistent with known VAERS under-ascertainment bias

3/ Comparing our age-stratified VFRs with published age-stratified coronavirus infection fatality rates (IFR) suggests the risks of COVID vaccines and boosters outweigh the benefits in children, young adults and older adults with low occupational risk or previous coronavirus exposure.

4/ Interestingly, our estimates of 133K to 187K vaccine-related deaths are very similar to recent, independent estimates based off of US VAERS data through August 28th, 2021 by Rose and Crawford (11).

In other words, these researchers found numbers similar to what we found, within a factor of 2. They agree that over 150,000 people have been killed by the vaccines so far. This is more than 3 times the number killed in combat in the Vietnam war; a war which lasted for nearly 20 years. However, there is no stopping condition for these vaccines and no member of Congress or the CDC is willing to draw a line in the sand and say, “The US government should halt the vaccines after X number of Americans have been killed.” A reasonable stopping condition is 32 people. In 1976 we stopped the H1N1 vaccine after just 32 deaths.

Today, the number of deaths allowed is unlimited. And there is no liability for the manufacturers. And there have been no payouts at all to the hundreds of thousands of vaccine injured. Zero. Zip. Nada. Nobody in Congress (or the mainstream media) seems troubled by the fact that the vaccines kill more people than they save. The Pfizer Phase 3 trial saved 1 life from COVID for every 22,000 people vaccinated. So for 220M fully vaccinated, it’s 10,000 lives saved, but 150,000 or more people killed. So we kill 15 people to save 1. And we mandate it to boot. Maybe someday, we’ll find one member of Congress who will actually pay attention to what the data says and say two words, “I object.”

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“..the Supreme Court is preparing to give “JB” his second colonoscopy of the season when they reconvene after New Year’s..”

Reindeer Games (Kunstler)

There is also the shell game currently being played by Pfizer and its two “vaccines” — the one still under an emergency use authorization called BioNTech, and Pfizer’s replacement for that, Comirnaty, which has received an FDA approval under shady circumstances. The catch is, Pfizer refuses to release Comirnaty in the USA because approved drugs do not enjoy that shield against liability. Pfizer’s BioNTech vaxx has injured and killed many thousands of people the past year. If the two vaxxes are the same, you can expect Comirnaty to kill and injure plenty of victims, and Pfizer will be sued up its pfizoo. Therefore, Pfizer is also working hard to confuse the public about whether the two drugs are actually the same or not.

Ohio University tried to pull a switcheroo with its vaxx mandate, saying they’d made Comirnaty available to students, which is obviously untrue, since Pfizer won’t release it. They are using the unapproved BioNTech. Ohio law (HB 244, in effect this past October) prevents Ohio public schools from mandating vaccines not approved by the FDA. Hence, students at Ohio University are suing the school over its vaccine mandate. Alas, the Omicron variant has turned into the Grinch that is stealing their Christmas. Omicron is so mild an illness that there has been perhaps one death from it in America — and who knows how chronically ill that patient was? (They won’t say, of course.) All week long, as it became increasingly evident Omicron was nothing to get worked-up about, the “Joe Biden” regime went into overdrive trying to cow the nation into another round of submission and more booster shots.

On Tuesday, the worked-up so-called president rolled out the phony trope that this latest act in the melodrama is a “crisis of the unvaccinated” — despite the fact that both vaxxed and unvaxxed are equally susceptible to Omicron, and the additional fact that Omicron spreads so effectively that in just a month it is displacing all the previous and more deadly Covid variants. Notice, though, that “Joe Biden” didn’t dare lay any lockdowns on the country, while the Supreme Court is preparing to give “JB” his second colonoscopy of the season when they reconvene after New Year’s to hear the cases against his vaxx mandate. You can infer that this might mean the end of the Covid 19 pandemic extravaganza that has so benefited the party in power.

It has given them free rein to the only policy exercise they know: pushing people around. If there’s any lesson that Americans need to draw about the Democratic Party’s motives during this two-year Covid horror show it is that “progressives” are determined to punish, coerce, and persecute the people of this land, while stealing as much of their wealth as possible, and driving our culture into a ditch. So, with Omicron on the scene like an unexpected reality-test, the Democrats may be fresh out of monsters to terrify the populace. As the horror movie ends and the screen fades to black, the audience is apt to walk out from under that mass formation spell into the winter sunlight, blinking and gasping at the insane ordeal they’ve been subjected to. It’s already happening in a bunch of blue cities whose Democratic bosses have discovered that de-funding the police was a shuck-and-jive they now have to answer for.

[..] This Christmas Eve, we can’t omit great thanks to some of the other brave medical researchers and doctors across the country who have sacrificed livelihoods to fight both for the peoples’ health and against the torrents of bad faith and dishonesty spewed out against the people of this land by their own government and its propaganda legions. Kudos to Dr. Robert Malone, Dr. Peter McCollough, Dr. Pierre Kory, Dr. Scott Atlas, Dr. Chris Martenson, Dr. David Martin, Dr. Steve Kirsch, Dr. Bret Weinstein, Dale Bigtree, Alex Berenson, Joe Rogan, Tucker Carlson, Glenn Greenwald, and many many others who are standing up against tyranny and coercion.

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Today’s hospitalization stats (“like when Pfizer says: 90 percent reduction!”) are based on a 2013 paper written by Big Pharma.

Lies Damn Lies and Hospitalisation Statistics (Bendell)

I know that most of us who are not specialists in this topic do not have time to look into the statistics or at who produces them. Also, when some of us do make the time, we invite being shamed for moving outside ‘our lane’ or ‘disrespecting experts’. Therefore, as a Professor with a specialism in methodology but absolutely no medical science training, I decided to write up my journey of discovery as I tried to understand the processes behind those big claims on reductions of hospitalisation. The process was frustrating. For the first days I kept discovering a lack of explanation about how the statistics on big reductions in hospitalisation had been produced. For instance, the UK report #50 does not say anything about how it calculates the figures of over 90 percent reductions in hospitalisation. Nothing!

I had to go back months to find some references to the methodology – which I found in report #17. However, the report did not explain it either and cited another paper for the methodology. I found that study and read it, only to find that it did not explain the methodology and referenced yet another paper for the explanation. As an academic I know this is not uncommon – nearly everyone can be a bit sloppy with their references and provide a reference to a study which does not fully explain what one is asserting. However, as this was a government report to inform and justify policy on a pandemic that is affecting everyone’s lives, I expected better than what I get from my students. I continued on my quest for the elusive source of the method for producing the statistics on the wonderful vaccine effectiveness.

Upon reading that next paper, I found it offered no explanation of rationale for the method! I will say more about each paper and link to them later. But first I want to tell you why this matters… After following a trail of references cited by each paper, I arrived at an explanation for the statistical method on reduced hospitalisation, from 2013. That paper was the main source for the idea that this particular method gives us credible statistics on vaccine effectiveness. Guess what? No, I am not a conspiracy theorist. I often demonstrate in my research how the power of capital influences much in our lives. So it was not a surprise to me to read that this paper was written by members of the pharmaceutical industry. It proposed and defended a method for calculating vaccination effectiveness that would inevitably “prove” vaccination effectiveness.

I concluded that the exciting claims that there are over 90 percent reductions in hospitalisation due to vaccination are actually instances of our medical authorities misleading the public by using dubious statistical methods from the pharmaceutical industry to prove the effectiveness of their vaccines. Furthermore, without needing the clinical trials that the medical establishment typically require. If you read on, I will explain how it works. I invite you to investigate it yourself. Or you could decide not to bother and instead just think I should have ‘stayed in my lane’ so you can go back to pretending that pharmaceutical companies care for us, the medical bureaucrats they have trained are critical thinkers defending the public, and that the politicians know what they are doing.

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Left out here: Molnupiravir changes the virus genome. What are the odds it can change yours as well?

Molnupiravir Is Good At One Thing — And That’s What Makes It Scary (WaPo)

On Thursday, the Food and Drug Administration made what may be the most momentous drug-approval decision in its history: It granted emergency-use authorization for Merck’s molnupiravir to treat covid-19. This approval is significant not because molnupiravir is an especially good drug, but because it is a rather ineffective and dangerous one. In particular, molnupiravir might create new variants of SARS-CoV-2 that evade immunity and prolong the pandemic. The problem with molnupiravir lies in its mechanism of action. Unlike any previous antiviral drug, molnupiravir does only one thing: It introduces mutations into the viral genome. We are already familiar with the fact that viruses naturally mutate to evade immunity; the many mutations of the spike protein in omicron, for example, allow it to evade the antibodies created by prior infections or vaccines.

Molnupiravir relies on inducing even more mutations so that eventually the virus’s proteins are damaged beyond function. That molnupiravir can mutate SARS-CoV-2 to death has been demonstrated in the controlled conditions of a petri dish and lab animal cages, leading Merck to test it in covid-19 patients in clinical trials. But people are not petri dishes or lab animals, and while molnupiravir works to some extent, it has not worked very well in covid-19 patients. Specifically, molnupiravir reduced hospitalizations by only 30 percent. In contrast, Pfizer’s antiviral drug Paxlovid, which works by a different mechanism and was also approved this week by the FDA, reduced hospitalization by 89 percent. (My lab does research on drugs using the same mechanism as Paxlovid — inhibition of the viral protease enzyme — independently of any company affiliations.)

This means that most of the time that molnupiravir was given the opportunity, it failed to inhibit viral replication enough to allow the patient to avoid hospitalization. Merck’s own research, published Thursday, explains why. It found that viable virus can still be detected in some patients on the third day of treatment with the drug. That means that for at least several days, the drug is in the body mutating the virus — but not all virus genomes have picked up enough mutations to die off. For those initial few days, then, the patient is a breeding ground for viable mutated viruses. The first days of molnupiravir treatment present a clear opportunity for mutant viruses to be transmitted to family members or caregivers.

Viral evolution is a process of selecting for rare mutations that are beneficial to the virus. It doesn’t matter if just one out of the billions of copies of viruses in an infected individual mutates to a higher level of fitness. That single copy, either by evading existing antibodies or replicating to yet higher levels of fitness, will become amplified either in that patient or in the next person infected. The worst-case scenario is worrisome. As long as molnupiravir is in use somewhere in the world, it could generate repeated cycles of new variants, with people desperately taking the drug to fight the new variants it spawns, creating a vicious positive feedback loop while causing more suffering and deaths.

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Google translate from Holland. They lost it. Completely.

Stricter Guidelines: Housemates, Young Children In Quarantine For 10 Days (AD)

Until today, people who have already had corona or were vaccinated did not have to quarantine if a roommate tested positive. They only had to be tested at the GGD on day five. Children from 0 to 4 years old were also excluded. The RIVM is now tightening the isolation and quarantine guidelines because of the advance of the omikron variant. Housemates and close contacts of an infected person are also not allowed to come into large groups or in crowded places for the first ten days after the last contact and must avoid contact with vulnerable people. However, the quarantine may be ended in the event of a negative test at the GGD, on day five after the last contact with the infected person.


Anyone who has tested positive once in the last eight weeks does not need to be quarantined or tested. According to the RIVM, they probably still have enough antibodies in their bodies. The stricter guideline does not apply to healthcare workers who have worked with protective equipment. Crew members of international flights are allowed to quarantine after day five. The isolation rules are aligned. From now on, everyone who has tested positive, with and without complaints, is advised to go into isolation for seven days after a positive test. People without complaints who still develop complaints during the isolation must then be in isolation again for seven days.

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“Perhaps the most pernicious of all is the asymptomatic transmission hypothesis. It is this, more than any other, that has driven most of the absurdity and tyranny.”

There Are So Many Elephants In The Room (Rigger)

The problem I have, with the “official” version of the covid narrative, is that it is not internally self-consistent and there are more elephants in the room than there is space. These are not subtle buggers at all. They’re not hiding behind the sofa – there’s at least 20 of them sitting on the thing, drinking tea and smoking weed, whilst discussing the finer points of Wittgenstein. If I tried to list all the problems I have with the official version of all things covid I would probably be here until next Christmas. I had a chat with two of the elephants sitting on my sofa. They’re on their 10th cup of tea and quite animated. Having torn Wittgenstein apart they’re laying into covid now.

One of them, Nelly, had had enough and was packing her trunk – she wanted to say goodbye to the covid circus. What you stupid humans have forgotten, she said, is to follow the scientific method. You just can’t see what’s right there in front of your pitifully small noses. It works like this, she said. You formulate hypotheses, your best guesses as to what’s happening. You then test those hypotheses against what you observe. If you’d done that with covid, you wouldn’t now be up Loxodonta Creek without a paddle. If you frame all-things-covid in terms of hypotheses, instead of scientific “fact” it becomes much clearer.

• Asymptomatic transmission is a significant driver : hypothesis

• Lockdowns significantly slow down transmission and/or save lives : hypothesis

• Masks have a significant effect on transmission : hypothesis

• Keeping 6ft away from people reduces transmission : hypothesis

• The only way out of this is vaccination : hypothesis

• Surfaces are a significant source of infection : hypothesis

These are just some of the hypotheses we have been treated to. They are NOT facts. They are “guesses” which need to be checked against observation. Instead, they’ve been adopted like some kind of Holy Writ. In the process we’ve adopted all sorts of bizarre behaviours in pursuit of an illusory “safety”. None of those hypotheses listed above have successfully passed the test of experiment. Perhaps the most pernicious of all is the asymptomatic transmission hypothesis. It is this, more than any other, that has driven most of the absurdity and tyranny.

Curiously, though, we might have actually made this one come true to some extent. If you have a medical product that doesn’t stop the virus replicating, but does stop your body from producing the usual symptoms of infection, it seems at least plausible that you have a situation where use of this product turns you into a genuine asymptomatic transmitter. But like any other hypothesis, this needs testing too.

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“I want people to look at what is happening in football, have a proper investigation, and give us some answers as to why so many sportspeople are suffering from heart issues. It’s not difficult.”

Football Icon Accused Of ‘Encouraging Vaccine Suspicion’ Over Heart-scare Cases (RT)

The English Premier League recently revealed that 77% of its stars are fully vaccinated against Covid while 84% are on “the vaccination journey” – meaning they have had at least one jab. That rate lags someway behind other top leagues in Europe, with Italy’s Serie A, the German Bundesliga and Spain’s La Liga all reporting full vaccination rates of over 90% among players. The Premier League has seen a surge of cancelations in recent weeks as Covid outbreaks have struck teams across the league, with some suggesting the blame lies with unvaccinated stars. According to a report in the New York Times, which looked at the reasons behind vaccine reluctance, medics at some clubs cited the likes of former England internationals Matt Le Tissier and Trevor Sinclair as “encouraging suspicion” of Covid jabs by referring to on-field heart scares.

Football has seen several high-profile cases of players suffering heart problems in recent months, including the shocking collapse of Denmark star Christian Eriksen at Euro 2020 and the retirement of Barcelona forward Sergio Aguero. Ex-West Ham and Manchester City player Sinclair – who became a TV pundit after his retirement – posted a controversial tweet in November in which he pondered: “Everyone I speak to about these heart problems suffered by footballers (which worryingly seem to be happening more regularly) are they linked to covid vaccines or not??” Elsewhere, Southampton legend Le Tissier – known as one of the most skillful stars of his generation – has been a vocal critic of vaccine mandates.

Appearing on GB News earlier this month, he demanded an inquiry into the series of players who have suffered heart scares, which was added to by Manchester United’s Victor Lindelof in his team’s most recent match against Norwich City. “It’s been very concerning for me, watching the sport that I love and that I played for 17 years,” said Le Tissier, 53. “And it’s been very concerning to me that in all that time I never once saw any footballer leave the pitch because of heart issues. “Now I’m sorry, but if anybody can look at what is happening now in the world of sport and say it’s normal for all of these people to be having heart issues in football matches, cricket matches, basketball matches, any sport you wish. “The amount of people that are suffering is going through the roof. And I would call for an investigation because it might not be to do with the vaccines. “But let’s have an investigation to find out what it is. But even saying that deems you to be some kind of anti-vaxxer.

“I want people to look at what is happening in football, have a proper investigation, and give us some answers as to why so many sportspeople are suffering from heart issues. It’s not difficult.” Doctors such as Professor Sanjay Sharma, the UK’s leading sports cardiologist, have been adamant that the jab is not to blame, telling the Daily Mail that “my feeling is that this is probably a statistical cluster rather than something on the rise.” Sharma said the cases involving Eriksen and Aguero, among others, “were nothing to do with Covid or the vaccine.” After Eriksen’s collapse in the summer, officials at his former club Inter Milan also moved to quell speculation by stating that he had not been vaccinated. Some have pointed to the increased intensity of the game as a potential cause of heart issues in players, or the fact that cases tend to be amplified now because of increased media scrutiny and through social media.

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“.. it will occur gradually and unevenly as societies cease to be all consumed by the pandemic’s shocking metrics.”

”..the covid-19 pandemic will be over when we turn off our screens and decide that other issues are once again worthy of our attention.”

The End of The Pandemic Will Not Be Televised (BMJ)

While visual depictions of epidemics have existed for centuries, covid-19 is the first one in which real time dashboards have saturated and structured the public’s experience. Some historians have observed that pandemics do not conclude when disease transmission ends “but rather when, in the attention of the general public and in the judgment of certain media and political elites who shape that attention, the disease ceases to be newsworthy.”8 Pandemic dashboards provide endless fuel, ensuring the constant newsworthiness of the covid-19 pandemic, even when the threat is low. In doing so, they might prolong the pandemic by curtailing a sense of closure or a return to pre-pandemic life.

Deactivating or disconnecting ourselves from the dashboards may be the single most powerful action towards ending the pandemic. This is not burying one’s head in the sand. Rather, it is recognising that no single or joint set of dashboard metrics can tell us when the pandemic is over. History suggests that the end of the pandemic will not simply follow the attainment of herd immunity or an official declaration, but rather it will occur gradually and unevenly as societies cease to be all consumed by the pandemic’s shocking metrics. Pandemic ending is more of a question of lived experience, and thus is more of a sociological phenomenon than a biological one. And thus dashboards—which do not measure mental health, educational impact, and the denial of close social bonds—are not the tool that will tell us when the pandemic will end.

Indeed, considering how societies have come to use dashboards, they may be a tool that helps prevent a return to normal. Pandemics—at least respiratory viral pandemics—simply do not end in a manner amenable to being displayed on dashboards. Far from a dramatic “end,” pandemics gradually fade as society adjusts to living with the new disease agent and social life returns to normal. As an extraordinary period in which social life was upturned, the covid-19 pandemic will be over when we turn off our screens and decide that other issues are once again worthy of our attention. Unlike its beginning, the end of the pandemic will not be televised.

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Kiriakou is ex-CIA.

Those Nasty Russians (John Kiriakou)

The New York Times reported this week that Russia is preparing its public for potential war with the United States. Moscow is “promoting patriotism” by training high school students in history and military history, according to the Times, and that Russian media outlets are saying that the country considers itself to be “surrounded by enemies” and may be forced to defend itself “as it did against the Nazis.” Going even further, the Times added that Russia had already “massed troops on the border with Ukraine,” a lie that has been perpetuated in the mainstream media all across the United States. Where do we even begin to pick this story apart? I’m not a Russia expert. But if I learned anything at the C.I.A., it was critical thinking and the necessity for basing my conclusions on facts.

First, every country teaches its children history, including military history. Indeed, education in the United States is rich in military history. Every student learns about the the French and Indian War, the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, the Civil War, the Spanish-American War, World War I, World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Gulf War, the Iran War, and Afghanistan, to name just a few of our “glorious campaigns.” (I put myself through graduate school by teaching high school history for two years.)

Second, anybody who has paid any attention to the news over the past five years knows that the U.S. media have accused Russia of all sorts of misdeeds without a lot of proof. It was Russia that “stole” the election in 2016 from Hillary Clinton through Wikileaks. It was Russia that pitted Americans against each other through social media advertising during the 2020 election. It was Russia that “invaded and occupied Ukraine” in violation of international law.

Third, according to the Times and other outlets, Russian troops are massed on the Ukraine border ready to invade at the drop of a hat. That’s simply not true. There are between 70,000 and 90,000 Russian troops on the border, the same number that have been there for the past eight years. An “invasion” would require at least 300,000 troops, according to military analysts. Around 100,000 Russian troops are in Yelnya, Russia, which is 160 miles from the Ukraine border and is closer to Belarus than it is to Ukraine. There is no imminent threat of a Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Fourth, the Russians actually are surrounded by enemies. Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Romania, and Poland, all former Soviet Russian allies, are all now members of NATO. Ukraine is begging to join NATO and is the recipient of millions of dollars in U.S. military aid. Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan, also former Soviet republics, all host U.S. military bases. It should be no surprise to anybody that the Russians feel threatened militarily (after also being sanctioned and threatened constantly with “serious consequences.”)

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“What will be the State Department’s response when the Republic of Iran demands the extradition of New York Times reporters for violating Iran’s secrecy laws?”

Bad Faith, Worse News, and Julian Assange (Snowden)

I agree with my friends (and lawyers) at the ACLU: the US government’s indictment of Assange amounts to the criminalization of investigative journalism. And I agree with myriad friends (and lawyers) throughout the world that at the core of this criminalization is a cruel and unsual paradox: namely, the fact that many of the activities that the US government would rather hush up are perpetrated in foreign countries, whose journalism will now be answerable to the US court system. And the precedent established here will be exploited by all manner of authoritarian leaders across the globe. What will be the State Department’s response when the Republic of Iran demands the extradition of New York Times reporters for violating Iran’s secrecy laws?

How will the United Kingdom respond when Viktor Orban or Recep Erdogan seeks the extradition of Guardian reporters? The point is not that the U.S. or U.K would ever comply with those demands — of course they wouldn’t — but that they would lack any principled basis for their refusals. The U.S. attempts to distinguish Assange’s conduct from that of more mainstream journalism by characterizing it as a “conspiracy.” But what does that even mean in this context? Does it mean encouraging someone to uncover information (which is something done every day by the editors who work for Wikileaks’ old partners, The New York Times and The Guardian)? Or does it mean giving someone the tools and techniques to uncover that information (which, depending on the tools and techniques involved, can also be construed as a typical part of an editor’s job)?

The truth is that all national security investigative journalism can be branded a conspiracy: the whole point of the enterprise is for journalists to persuade sources to violate the law in the public interest. And insisting that Assange is somehow “not a journalist” does nothing to take the teeth out of this precedent when the activities for which he’s been charged are indistinguishable from the activities that our most decorated investigative journalists routinely engage in.

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Why I Don’t Want to Show my Vaccine Passport

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Dec 052021
 


Rembrandt van Rijn Study of the Head and Clasped Hands of a Young Man as Christ in Prayer 1655

 

1 In 2680 Young Men In Hong Kong Get Acute Myocarditis From Comirnaty (Malone)
120 Children Hospitalized In Vietnam Pfizer Vaccine Batch Suspended (Vne)
Twitter: Research On Potential Heart Risks Of Covid Vaccine ‘Unsafe’ (JTN)
WHO: Omicron in 38 Countries, No Deaths Reported (ET)
Do You Know Why There Isn’t An EUA For Fluvoxamine? (Kirsch)
‘Wall Of Secrecy’ In Pfizer Contracts As Company Accused Of Profiteering (G.)
Australian Children Aged 5 To 11 Set To Receive Pfizer Covid Vaccine
Molnupiravir Set For UK At-Home Trials (G.)
EU Chief Calls For Throwing Out Nuremberg Code (PM)
Hundreds Of NY Corrections Officers Put On Leave For Refusing Covid Jab (NYP)
Joe Biden Warns Vladimir Putin Not to Invade Ukraine (GR)
Obituary for Russiagate (Patrick Lawrence)

 

 

So we don’t blame them

 

 

Below is an article by Robert Malone about myocarditis in Hong Kong, which says 37.32 per 100,000 = 1 in 2680 young men are afflicted.

But Eric Topol says there are no cases among 5 million kids in the US. At the same ratio (and why shouldn’t there be), there should be 1,850. Irresponsible nonsense, Topol. 2nd hand car salesman.

Topol
https://twitter.com/EricTopol/status/1467242562285092865

 

 

“..Under conditions of terror most people will comply but some people will not, just as the lesson of the countries to which the Final Solution was proposed is that “it could happen” in most places but it did not happen everywhere.” – Hannah Arendt

 

 

They never found a cure for the “common” cold because the cold IS the cure.

 

 

“37.32 per 100,000 = 1 in 2680 young men who develop myocarditis/pericarditis within two weeks of their second vaccination..”

1 In 2680 Young Men In Hong Kong Get Acute Myocarditis From Comirnaty (Malone)

Strong data from a peer reviewed article in the journal of Clinical Infectious Disease shows that there is a significant increase in the risk of myocarditis/pericarditis following Comirnaty vaccination among Chinese male adolescents, especially after the second dose. Onset of myocarditis was a median of 2 days after vaccination. The clinically significant (acute and/or “mild”) myocarditis/pericarditis incidence rate came in at one out of every 2680 young males. The results conclude with : “Among male adolescents, the incidence after the first and second doses were 5.57 (95% CI 2.38-12.53) and 37.32 (95% CI 26.98-51.25) per 100,000 persons vaccinated.”

Analysis: 37.32 per 100,000 = 1 in 2680 young men who develop myocarditis/pericarditis within two weeks of their second vaccination (median time to disease: 2 days). This study was an analysis of hospital records of myocarditis/pericarditis, so did not include adolescents who may have developed the disease but did not seek medical attention. Many pediatric cardiologists including my colleague and friend Dr. Kirk Milhoan, MD, PhD (MD board certified in pediatric cardiology, PhD. in vascular inflammation) assert that there is no such thing as “mild” myocarditis in children. Myocarditis causes heart damage. Heart damage is for life – the heart does not heal by replacing damaged cells. It scars. Scars in the heart can lead to changes in electrical conduction in heart muscle, which in turn can result in “sudden death” due to changes in heart beat regularity and muscular contraction of the heart. These events may happen at any time, particularly when the heart is stressed in some way.

Results (from the abstract) Between 14 June 2021 and 4 September 2021, 33 Chinese adolescents who developed acute myocarditis/pericarditis following Comirnaty vaccination were identified. 29 (87.88%) were males and 4 (12.12%) were females, with a median age of 15.25 years. 27 (81.82%) and 6 (18.18%) cases developed acute myocarditis/pericarditis after receiving the second and first dose, respectively. All cases are mild and required only conservative management. The overall incidence of acute myocarditis/pericarditis was 18.52 (95% Confidence Interval [CI], 11.67-29.01) per 100,000 persons vaccinated. The incidence after the first and second doses were 3.37 (95%CI 1.12-9.51) and 21.22 (95%CI 13.78-32.28 per 100,000 persons vaccinated, respectively. Among male adolescents, the incidence after the first and second doses were 5.57 (95% CI 2.38-12.53) and 37.32 (95% CI 26.98-51.25) per 100,000 persons vaccinated.

Conclusion from the Abstract “There is a significant increase in the risk of acute myocarditis/pericarditis following Comirnaty vaccination among Chinese male adolescents, especially after the second dose.”

Read more …

Just a batch? Let’s see the follow-up.

120 Children Hospitalized In Vietnam Pfizer Vaccine Batch Suspended (Vne)

Thanh Hoa has suspended the use of a Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine batch after over 120 students were hospitalized following their inoculation. Since November 30, the central province has been vaccinating children aged 15-17 with the Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine. However, over 120 of the children were admitted to hospitals after exhibiting symptoms like nausea, high fever or breathing difficulties, the provincial Center for Disease Control (CDC) said Thursday. Of these, 17 had severe reactions, but their health has stabilized and they continue to be monitored at the hospital, the center said. The cause of their symptoms has yet to be confirmed by Thanh Hoa authorities.

Thanh Hoa CDC director Luong Ngoc Truong said the province has stopped using the current vaccine batch. “We still have other batches, also Pfizer vaccines, so we will continue vaccinating the children,” he said. The suspended batch would be put into storage and could be used later for other groups like adults, Truong added. Vu Van Chinh, director of the Ha Trung District General Hospital, said side-effects following vaccination was normal, but are more likely to happen in children than adults. “Those who have reactions or faint need to be separated so no chain reaction occurs,” said Chinh.

The Thanh Hoa CDC has distributed around 117,000 Covid-19 vaccine doses to 27 districts and towns. Over 56,700 doses have been administered. Over the past week, three children have died following their vaccination with the Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine in Bac Giang, Hanoi and Binh Phuoc. The cause of death has been determined as “overreaction to the vaccine.” Last week, four workers in Thanh Hoa’s Kim Viet Shoe factory died following their Vero Cell Covid-19 vaccination, also due to “overreaction.”

Read more …

It’s not the vaccine that’s unsafe, it’s the research.

Twitter: Research On Potential Heart Risks Of Covid Vaccine ‘Unsafe’ (JTN)

Twitter this week ignited controversy when it slapped an “unsafe” label on a research abstract regarding potential heart effects arising from the use of COVID-19 mRNA vaccines. The abstract in question, “Mrna COVID Vaccines Dramatically Increase Endothelial Inflammatory Markers and ACS Risk as Measured by the PULS Cardiac Test: a Warning,” claims that research suggests those vaccines “dramatically increase inflammation on the endothelium and T cell infiltration of cardiac muscle” and that the purported side effects “may account for the observations of increased thrombosis, cardiomyopathy, and other vascular events following vaccination.” The abstract, published in the American Heart Association-affiliated journal Circulation, drew an “expression of concern” from the AHA’s Committee on Scientific Sessions Program.


That statement claimed that, within the article, “there are several typographical errors, there is no data in the abstract regarding myocardial T-cell infiltration, there are no statistical analyses for significance provided, and the author is not clear that only anecdotal data was used.” Twitter subsequently applied the “unsafe” warning to the original article, with users who click through to the abstract being told that the research “could” constitute, among other potential categories, “violent or misleading content that could lead to real-world harm.” The original abstract was published by controversial American cardiac surgeon Steven Gundry, who has been criticized for his theories on the link between heart inflammation and lectins.

Read more …

Some people must be disappointed. They’ll find a way.

WHO: Omicron in 38 Countries, No Deaths Reported (ET)

The World Health Organization (WHO) on Friday said the COVID-19 omicron variant is now in 38 countries, up from 23 two days ago, suggesting that the variant may be more contagious than Delta. During a news conference, WHO official Maria Van Kerkhove said the U.N. health body has seen “an increasing growth rate,” and “we see increasing numbers of Omicron being detected.” No deaths have been reported so far in connection to the COVID-19 strain, another WHO spokesperson told reporters Friday. “There is a suggestion that there is increased transmissibility, what we need to understand is if it’s more or less transmissible compared to Delta,” Van Kerkhove said. The Delta variant is the dominant strain throughout the world, she said.

In the United States, at least six U.S. states have confirmed Omicron cases so far, including a fully vaccinated male who traveled from an anime convention in New York City to Minnesota this week, according to health officials, who said the individual had mild symptoms and recovered. The first American case was detected in California’s San Francisco Bay Area. A previous update from WHO said Omicron has numerous mutations to its spike protein, which is what it uses to bind to human cells, which may lead to higher transmission rates. It’s not yet clear, however, officials have cautioned. But whether the new strain causes more severe disease or not is unclear, Van Kerkhove said. Early reports from South Africa and Israel suggest many patients experience mild symptoms.

Van Kerkhove said that the first Omicron cases were based on a cluster of college students, noting that younger people tend to experience milder symptoms than older people. A top South African doctor this week told news outlets that the symptoms were unusual but “extremely mild.” “There was initial reports that it tended to be more mild, but it’s really too soon,” Van Kerkhove said. “Everybody who is infected with SARS-CoV-2 regardless of what variant will always start out with a mild disease. And so maybe it will stop there with mild, some people are asymptomatic of course, but it may stop with mild disease or it may take some time.”

Read more …

“Basically, the system is set up so that only proprietary drugs that can kill you are approved.”

Do You Know Why There Isn’t An EUA For Fluvoxamine? (Kirsch)

The reason is simple. We tried. And after 6 weeks of waiting, we were told that to get an EUA for a repurposed drug, you have to partner with a drug company in the EUA application. Because no drug company will partner with us, even if we pay all the filing costs, there won’t be an EUA. Ever. So most doctors will never prescribe it for COVID, even thought it works better than anything else. And the NIH won’t do anything with fluvoxamine either like add it to their guidelines. It will never be upgraded on the NIH COVID treatment guidelines. It is currently sitting at “NEUTRAL” after two trials where it had a 100% risk reduction in both trials without any downside risk. In short, if deployed it would likely save a lot of lives and there is no risk of deployment since the risks of the drug are well known.

It’s a very safe drug when properly prescribed. I took it myself and I couldn’t tell I was on it the side-effects were so negligible. When the fluvoxamine Phase 3 study published in Lancet showed the drug worked better than any other drug (including the new antiviral pills from Merck and Pfizer), the NIH simply ignored the study. They didn’t even mention it. Even 60 Minutes which did a story on fluvoxamine didn’t mention the Phase 3 study proved it worked when the study came out (normally, they’d do this at the end of a show to let their audience know they got it right). Fluvoxamine provides a 12-fold reduction in death if you started the drug early, but the NIH basically said “Ho hum. Only 12X reduction in death? That’s better than anything including the vaccines (which according to the Pfizer 6 month Phase 3 study was only a 2X reduction in mortality).

So not even worth mentioning in the guidelines. It would save too many lives. Best to ignore it. And if we ignore it, no doctor in America will dare to prescribe it. So the vaccine will be the only option just like we planned.” Cliff Lane, who heads the guidelines committee, reports to Fauci. Cliff simply isn’t going to allow the NIH recommendation to be modified no matter what the science says. This is not about saving lives. It never was. When the key opinion leader (KOL) panel of NIH, CDC, FDA and academia experts recommended fluvoxamine be used back in January 2021, the NIH ignored that too. Jeffrey Klausner, who convened the panel, wrote a great op-ed about it in the Washington Post right after the meeting so everyone would know. Doctors ignored it.

Klausner shopped the KOL meeting notes to 10 journals, all of whom refused to publish it. Truly stunning! Life saving drug and nobody would publish the recommendation of an expert panel to use it. Wow. When the KOL meeting notes were finally published in the peer-reviewed medical literature on December 1, 2021, only 12 months after the meeting, the NIH again did absolutely nothing, ignoring the advice of these key experts, even though now they have more data from the Together trial showing it works. Basically, the system is set up so that only proprietary drugs that can kill you are approved.

Read more …

The Guardian turns on Pfizer?

‘Wall Of Secrecy’ In Pfizer Contracts As Company Accused Of Profiteering (G.)

Ministers have agreed a secrecy clause in any dispute with the drugs manufacturer Pfizer over Britain’s Covid vaccine supply. Large portions of the government’s contracts with the company over the supply of 189m vaccine doses have been redacted and any arbitration proceedings will be kept secret. The revelation comes as Pfizer is accused by a former senior US health official of “war profiteering’’ during the pandemic. In a Channel 4 Dispatches investigation to be broadcast this week, Tom Frieden, who was director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention under Barack Obama, said: “If you’re just focusing on maximising your profits and you’re a vaccine manufacturer … you are war profiteering.”

Zain Rizvi, research director at Public Citizen, a US consumer advocacy organisation which has examined Pfizer’s global vaccine contracts, said: “There is a wall of secrecy surrounding these contracts and it’s unacceptable, particularly in a public health crisis.” Rizvi said the UK needed to explain why it had agreed to secret arbitration proceedings. He said: “It’s the only high-income country we have seen that has agreed to this provision. It allows pharmaceutical companies to bypass domestic legal processes. “The UK government has allowed the drug firms to call the shots. How did we end up in a situation where a handful of drug firms were able to exert so much control over the most powerful governments in the world? It points to a broken system.”

Pfizer has won plaudits for its vaccine delivery programme, but the US multinational faces growing scrutiny over the scale of its profits and the proportion of doses it has delivered to low-income countries. While AstraZeneca agreed to sell its vaccine at cost during the pandemic, Pfizer wanted to secure its profits. The Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine, which now has the brand name Comirnaty, will be one of the most lucrative drugs in pharmaceutical history. The Channel 4 investigation reveals analysis by one biological engineering expert claiming the Pfizer vaccine costs just 76p to manufacture for each shot. It is reportedly being sold for £22 a dose to the UK government.

The estimated manufacturing costs do not include research, distribution and other costs, but Pfizer says its profit margin as a percentage before tax are in the “high-20s”. Pfizer expects to deliver 2.3bn vaccines this year with predicted revenues of $36bn (£26.3bn).

Read more …

Big trial. Population wide.

Australian Children Aged 5 To 11 Set To Receive Pfizer Covid Vaccine

Australian children aged five to 11 could receive the Pfizer vaccine against Covid as soon as 10 January, following provisional approval by the country’s drugs regulator. The Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) green light, announced by the federal health minister, Greg Hunt, on Sunday will likely be followed by an independent recommendation from the Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation (Atagi) to use the vaccine in that age group. Hunt told reporters the provisional approval was “about keeping our kids safe, keeping our families safe, keeping all Australians safe”. “From 10 January, Australian children will have access to Pfizer vaccines, and it is recommended for children right across Australia,” he said in Melbourne.

Hunt said the TGA was also considering children’s doses of Moderna, the other mRNA vaccine, and will form a view on that “in the coming weeks”. The head of the TGA, Prof John Skerritt, said the Pfizer vaccine had been “extensively clinically tested” including a trial of 2,500 children aged five to 11. “The response of the body, the immune response, was identical to that in young adults,” he said. “There were … no safety problems identified in those trials. The children had some of the same things that adults get – tiredness, sore arms, headache and so forth – but these tended to be brief and fairly short-lived.” Skerritt said the children’s Pfizer was the “same vaccine” but “formulated differently for children” – using one-third of an adult dose.

[..] Hunt said 92.8% of Australians aged 16 and over have now had a first dose of a Covid-19 vaccine and 88% were double-dosed. Since vaccinations were opened to the 12 to 15 age group in September, more than three quarters (76.7%) in that cohort have received a first dose while two-thirds (67.8%) have had two doses.

Read more …

We know Molnupiravir doesn’t work. But:

“The UK has proven itself to be a world leader in identifying and rolling out effective treatments for Covid-19..”

Yeah, they have humor..

Molnupiravir Set For UK At-Home Trials (G.)

The first at-home treatment for Covid-19 could reportedly be offered to UK patients before Christmas as an attempt to protect the most vulnerable from the Omicron variant. The Sunday Telegraph reported that Sajid Javid is set to launch a national pilot of the Molnupiravir antiviral pill, marketed as Lagevrio. The newspaper said that under the plans, the NHS was expected to deliver courses of the tablet to clinically vulnerable and immunosuppressed patients within as little as 48 hours of them testing positive for Covid. It said hospitals and GPs had been told a series of Covid medicines delivery units were being established to ensure the treatment gets to patients as quickly as possible once it is confirmed they have the virus. Last month, the UK became the first country in the world to license its use – a move described as a “gamechanger” by Javid, the health secretary.


But just over a week ago, England’s chief medical officer, Prof Chris Whitty, warned its use may have to be reconsidered in the light of the emergence of Omicron. “I think we probably need to do a rethink of it just to make sure with the new variant, we’re targeting in the right direction.” A Department of Health and Social Care spokesman said: “The UK has proven itself to be a world leader in identifying and rolling out effective treatments for Covid-19, including through government-backed national trials. “The government’s antivirals taskforce was launched to identify treatments for UK patients who have been exposed to Covid-19 to take at home, stopping the infection spreading and speeding up recovery time. “There are a number of exciting opportunities in the pipeline and we will provide further details in due course.”

Read more …

This warrants a lot more scrutiny.

EU Chief Calls For Throwing Out Nuremberg Code (PM)

Ursula Van Der Leyen, the head of the EU commission, told the press on Wednesday that she is in favour of scrapping the long-standing Nuremburg Code and forcing people to get vaccinated against COVID. In an interview she gave to the BBC, the EU chief said that it was “understandable and appropriate” to consider vaccine mandates, especially due to the new Omicron variant of COVID 19, which has been now detected in 12 different member nations of the EU. “How we can encourage and potentially think about mandatory vaccination within the European Union? This needs discussion. This needs a common approach, but it is a discussion that I think has to be led,” commented Van Der Leyen to the BBC.


The WHO, however, has strongly encouraged countries not to enact travel bans because of Omicron, and further iterated that early data points to the fact that most Omicron cases are not severe. Most of the world’s governments are not paying attention to the WHO’s guidelines on this occasion, however. The Nuremberg Code was enacted in 1947, immediately after the Second World War to prevent many of the egregious human rights abuses enacted by the Nazis and the Imperial Japanese during the war. Especially were at issue the performance of medical procedures on subjects without their consent. These procedures, often performed under the command of people such as Dr. Josef Mengele or Hideki Tojo, often were akin to the worst kinds of torture. Since then, full and proactive ongoing consent has been required.

Read more …

It’s all about safety.

Hundreds Of NY Corrections Officers Put On Leave For Refusing Covid Jab (NYP)

More than 500 officers with the already depleted city Department of Corrections are still refusing to get vaccinated against COVID-19 and remain on unpaid leave. New data released by the city shows 17% of DOC uniform officers had yet to receive at least one jab as of Thursday night – two days after a deadline imposed by Mayor Bill de Blasio kicked in requiring proof of inoculation for them to continue working. Most city workers had until Oct. 29 to get vaccinated or be placed on unpaid leave until they provide proof of vaccination. However, de Blasio gave uniformed correction officers extra time — until Dec. 1 — to receive their first jab, because of the ongoing staffing shortage at the troubled Rikers Island jail complex.


Although the DOC’s 83% vaccination rate is the lowest of any city agency, the DOC has seen its rate rise significantly from 46% when de Blasio’s October mandate went into effect, and 77% when the correction officer deadline recently kicked in. Another 9% of DOC uniformed staff who have applied for medical or religious exemptions are continuing to report to work as the city reviews their cases, meaning 92% of the uniformed workforce is active. Councilman Keith Powers (D-Manhattan), who chairs the criminal justice committee that oversees city jails, said the mandates are working, adding “we still have work to do, but the current numbers present progress.” The mayor gave the DOC permission to assign 12-hour shifts and “any other measures necessary to address the current staffing shortage” earlier this week as the agency prepared for an employee shortage.

Read more …

Russia invading Ukraine is a story the US made up. So it can warn against it.

Joe Biden Warns Vladimir Putin Not to Invade Ukraine (GR)

President Joe Biden said on Friday that he and his administration have plans to make it “very, very difficult” for Russian President Vladimir Putin to invade Ukraine. Biden and his team are creating a new set of initiatives to check Russia and make sure Ukraine is protected. But Biden made sure to calmly issue a warning to Putin before any of said initiatives become necessary. The U.S. President is primarily concerned with an increased presence of Russian troops at the Ukrainian border. The Kremlin has also boasted war-ready rhetoric in its recent language. “What I am doing is putting together what I believe will be the most comprehensive and meaningful set of initiatives to make it very, very difficult for Mr. Putin to go ahead and do what people are worried he may do,” Biden told the press.

There are indications that the tensions are high enough that a meeting between the White House and the Kremlin may be held as soon as next week. Putin’s foreign affairs adviser Yuri Ushakov told the press that the Kremlin had been organizing a call between the two leaders in the next coming days. Will Biden has made sure not to name any specific consequences he is considering, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that he believes that Biden will put pressure on Russia with new sanctions. Lavrov spoke with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Stockholm, Sweden on Thursday, where Blinken said that the U.S. would “have to respond” if Russia acted on Ukraine:

“We don’t know President Putin’s intent. We don’t know if he’s made a decision to take renewed, aggressive action against Ukraine, but what we do know is that he’s putting in place the capacity to do so and to do so on short, on short notice,” Blinken said in a statement to Euronews following the meeting. But Lavrov seemed unshaken by Blinken’s remark and Biden’s warning, saying that “If the new ‘sanctions from hell’ come, we will respond. We can’t fail to respond.”

Read more …

Anybody can write one of these now. But how, looking at the fall-out, can you leave out the Covid hysteria? It’s lessons learned from Russiagate, on steroids.

Obituary for Russiagate (Patrick Lawrence)

There is, of course, the more dangerous world Russiagate has done so much to create. In the culture of unreason, the Deep State has a discouraging record of success in gaining wide public support for any aggressive campaign against any nation or people it wishes to act against. In this dimension, Russiagate has destroyed the Democrats as a party willing to stand against the imperial project in its late phase. A war with China over the Taiwan question is now spoken of as a logical possibility. Washington is now raising the temperature on the Ukraine–Russia border, just as it did when it cultivated the 2014 coup in Kiev, and this is put across as a Democratic administration’s sound policy. Rampant Russophobia is a direct consequence of the Russiagate ruse, Sinophobia its uglier sibling — uglier for its racist subtext.

We have active subversion operations in Nicaragua, Venezuela, Cuba and Peru, all progressive states in the true meaning of this term, and Democrats of all stripes — including “progressives” with the necessary quotation marks — cheer on every one of them. We cannot view this as distinct from the elevation of institutions dedicated to campaigns of covert subterfuge — chiefly but not only the C.I.A. — to wholly inappropriate positions of respect. The damage Russiagate has done to the press … let me rephrase this. The damage the press has inflicted upon itself in the cause of Russiagate is so extensive it is hard to calculate with any precision. We watch now as their credibility collapses in real time. Those running the mainstream newspapers and networks seem to understand this, as they rush to protect what remains of their reputations with rearguard actions to obscure their grossly irresponsible conduct.

The long list of those who caved to the Russiagate orthodoxy includes some stunning names. Among publications that should have known better we find Mother Jones, The Nation, The Intercept, and Democracy Now! Was it conformity, pressure from donors or Democratic Party ventriloquists, or some combination of ideology, ignorance and inexperience that caused them to flip? The Atlantic, The New Yorker, the major dailies, the networks — they have all sustained one or another degree of discredit, left either to craven rewrites in their archives, denial in the Corn–Frum mode, or silence. None will do: They will never regain lost ground without first acknowledging what they have done, and this appears out of the question.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

 

 

Melbourne
https://twitter.com/i/status/1466965416283029506

 

 

Vienna

 

 


This photo is the most detailed model of a human cell to date, obtained using X-ray, NMR, and cryo-electron microscopy data sets

 

 

Support the Automatic Earth in virustime; donate with Paypal, Bitcoin and Patreon.

 

Oct 292021
 
 October 29, 2021  Posted by at 9:05 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , ,  80 Responses »


Paul Gauguin Haymaking in Brittany 1889

 

Rates Among ‘Fully Vaccinated’ are Now Higher Than ‘Not Vaccinated’ (TP)
85% of Covid-19 Deaths & 75% of Hospitalisations among Fully Vaccinated (TE)
A.30 Variant ‘Efficiently Evades’ Antibodies Induced By Pfizer & AstraZeneca (RT)
The Treason of the Healers (BI)
Fast-Selling COVID-19 Treatment Avigan Made Available in UAE
Molnupiravir: Covid Wonder Drug or Money-Making Scam? (OffG)
There Are No Arguments on the Other Side (eugyppius)
Zuckerberg Announces Fantasy World Where Facebook Is Not Horrible (Vice)

 

 

The richer, and the more vaccines, the higher the covid counts

 

 

 

 

Ladapo

https://twitter.com/i/status/1453534072521756678

 

 

“The “pandemic of the unvaccinated” phrase is officially dead ”

Rates Among ‘Fully Vaccinated’ are Now Higher Than ‘Not Vaccinated’ (TP)

The American people have been inundated with the phrase “pandemic of the unvaccinated” as the White House has embarked on a relentless push for universal Covid ‘vaccination’ for months regardless of medical necessity. But new data out of the United Kingdom throws into question whether vaccination is a public health matter at all, given that the so-called vaccines’ ability to slow the spread is dubious at best. The United Kingdom’s data, although flawed, are still some of the most useful data in the world for investigating Covid rates and vaccination effects. The public health agency is direct about noting stunning developments in the case rates.

“The rate of a positive COVID-19 test is substantially lower in vaccinated individuals compared to unvaccinated individuals up to the age of 29,” Public Health England’s latest report notes. “In individuals aged greater than 30, the rate of a positive COVID-19 test is higher in vaccinated individuals compared to unvaccinated.” “This is likely to be due to a variety of reasons, including differences in the population of vaccinated and unvaccinated people as well as differences in testing patterns,” the report added. The adjusted data here show that there are more Covid-19 ‘cases’ per 100,000 in the vaccinated group than in the unvaccinated group for persons over age 30 years old.


Whether you want to blame the routine asymptomatic testing regime or the public health authorities ignoring natural immunity, these data can be interpreted as meaning that the vaccines are failing to appreciably slow the spread. Another thing it means: The “pandemic of the unvaccinated” phrase is officially dead.

Read more …

“But yet again the difference between the vaccinated and unvaccinated gets much worse when it comes to deaths allegedly related to Covid-19.”

85% of Covid-19 Deaths & 75% of Hospitalisations among Fully Vaccinated (TE)

The latest official Public Health data shows that the fully vaccinated accounted for 85% of Covid-19 deaths in the past four weeks, whilst also accounting for 75% of Covid-19 hospitalisations and 61% of alleged Covid-19 cases from September 25th through to October 22nd. The Covid-19 Statistical Report is a weekly report on Covid-19 data published by Public Health Scotland, and the latest update published October 27th confirms that things are getting worse for the fully vaccinated population by the week whilst things improve for the not-vaccinated population. Table 23 of the report confirms that the majority of Covid-19 cases were among the fully vaccinated population in the week beginning October 16th 2021, accounting for 10,992 cases. Whilst the not-vaccinated population accounted for just over half the amount, recording 5,756 cases.

The totals number of cases by vaccination status as confirmed by the above table between September 25th and October 22nd 2021 were as follows –
Not-vaccinated population = 27,511 cases
Partly vaccinated population = 3,621 cases
Fully-vaccinated population = 38,474 cases
This means the vaccinated population accounted for 61% of Covid-19 cases between September 25th and October 22nd, whilst the not-vaccinated population accounted for 39%.

However, the difference between the vaccinated and unvaccinated gets much worse when it comes to hospitalisations, with the fully vaccinated now accounting for the majority of Covid-19 hospitalisations since at least July 2021. The above table shows that the not-vaccinated over-60’s accounted for just 10% of Covid-19 hospitalisations between September 25th and October 22nd, whilst the vaccinated over 60’s accounted for 90%. A similar trend can also be seen in the 30 to 59 year-old age group with the not-vaccinated accounting for just 33% of Covid-19 hospitalisations, whilst the vaccinated accounted for 67%.

The totals number of hospitalisations by vaccination status for all age groups between September 25th and October 22nd 2021 as confirmed by table 24 of the PHS report were as follows –
Not-vaccinated population = 584
Partly vaccinated population = 81
Fully vaccinated population = 1672
This means the vaccinated population accounted for 75% of Covid-19 hospitalisations between September 25th and October 22nd 2021, whilst the not-vaccinated accounted for just 25%.

But yet again the difference between the vaccinated and unvaccinated gets much worse when it comes to deaths allegedly related to Covid-19.

Read more …

Have they developed anything at all specific for new variants?

A.30 Variant ‘Efficiently Evades’ Antibodies Induced By Pfizer & AstraZeneca (RT)

The A.30 variant of the coronavirus, detected in Angola and Sweden, is highly resistant to antibodies induced by the Pfizer and AstraZeneca vaccines, a new lab study has shown. A team from Germany looked at the rare A.30 variant that was first recorded in Tanzania and later detected in several patients in Angola and Sweden this spring. They compared the mutation to the Beta and Eta variants. Beta was chosen because it has “the highest level” of resistance to antibodies, the researchers said. According to the study published in the peer-reviewed journal Cellular & Molecular Immunology this week, the A.30 variant showed improved ability to enter most host cells, including kidney, liver, and lung cells.


The mutation “enters certain cell lines with increased efficiency and evades antibody-mediated neutralization,” the study found. “In summary, A.30 exhibits a cell line preference not observed for other viral variants and efficiently evades neutralization by antibodies elicited by ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 [AstraZeneca] or BNT162b2 [Pfizer] vaccination.” The variant also proved to be resistant to monoclonal drug Bamlanivimab, which is used for Covid-19 treatment, but was vulnerable to a cocktail of Bamlanivimab and Etesevimab. A.30 has so far not been listed by the World Health Organization (WHO) as a variant of interest or concern, due to its low prevalence.

Read more …

“..like the hierarchically-minded “good students” they were and are, they simply assume that someone somewhere up the chain of power has actually read things about these matters..”

The Treason of the Healers (BI)

There was, of course the long campaign of intellectual terror waged by Lysenko and his acolytes in the Soviet Union and the large-scale buy-in—much bigger than is still generally acknowledged or admitted—by German physicians of the genocidal program of “Nazi medicine” during the 30s and 40s. And here at home, we have more than enough disgusting cases of medical abuse (forced lobotomies, the Tuskegee Study, MK Ultra, Oxycontin to name just a few) to keep a forensic journalist or historian of medical crime busy for a lifetime. But when it comes to acknowledging this, things are much the way they are when it comes to acknowledging the serial crimes of the US empire.

It is—as Harold Pinter said in addressing this last matter in his Nobel speech—as if, “It never happened. Nothing ever happened. Even while it was happening it wasn’t happening. It didn’t matter. It was of no interest.” And because we have largely ignored these outrages against human dignity and the core ethos of healing—explaining them away the very few times when they are mentioned with the ever-useful “a few bad apples” meme—we find ourselves completely flat footed before the dangers of a new expert-led imposition of highly questionable public health policies, as well as a medical cadre that is more arrogant and less capable of personal and collective insight than one could have ever believed to be possible.

Emblematic of this new reality was a “dialogue” about Covid containment I recently had with a doctor friend who insisted in the inimitably declamatory fashion of his caste that: “We know what we have to do to control Covid. Just use masks and social distancing.” When I expressed skepticism about this and asked him whether he, like me, had read the available science on the effectiveness of those approaches to containment, he ignored me. And when I again asked if he had read the science he said: “You can cite all the trivia you want, but we know this is what works”. Indeed, I am more and more convinced that most practicing physicians have read precious few studies on the clinical treatment of Covid or the effectiveness of the public health measures that were invented out of whole cloth in March of 2020 to combat the spread of the disease.

Rather, like the hierarchically-minded “good students” they were and are, they simply assume that someone somewhere up the chain of power has actually read things about these matters, subjected them to critique, and decided they all made perfect sense. Indeed, never has Thomas Kuhn’s portrayal of the drone-like and paradigm-enslaved thinking of most working scientists looked more true. How else can we explain the fact that so many physicians have sat by silently while blatant anti-science and anti-logic nonsense is proffered to the public day after day by their media colleagues, and worse yet, have, in numerous cases, organized and led campaigns to silence the minority in their ranks who have the courage to challenge these absurd claims and the policies they make possible?

Read more …

“Avigan is the branded version of Favipiravir..”

Fast-Selling COVID-19 Treatment Avigan Made Available in UAE

AiPharma owned Global Response Aid (GRA) and Pharmax, both leading Dubai-based healthcare solutions providers, have partnered to supply the proven COVID-19 treatment, Avigan (Favipiravir), in the UAE. It allows patients with mild to moderate symptoms to be treated at home, easing the pressure on hospitals. Favipiravir was added to the list of approved therapeutics in the Dubai Health Authority’s (DHA) National Guidelines for Clinical Management and Treatment of COVID-19 in June 2020. The DHA recognises the drug as an effective treatment option for patients diagnosed with COVID-19. Avigan is the branded version of Favipiravir, a broad-spectrum anti-viral in oral tablet form originally developed by FujiFilm Toyama Chemical and approved in Japan for pandemic influenza.

Avigan has received full marketing authorization or emergency use authorisation in a number of markets as a treatment for COVID-19 including Mexico, India, Indonesia, Thailand, United Arab Emirates and Malaysia, with many other countries buying the drug under compassionate use programmes including the United Kingdom,, Greece, Hungary and Saudi Arabia. Worldwide sales of Avigan have risen from $9m in Q1 to more than $150m in Q3 2021. It has and continues to be stockpiled by governments and in the past 12 months 80m tablets have been stockpiled GRA, which has joint marketing and distribution rights to Avigan globally outside Japan, China and Russia, is now dealing with unprecedented demand for the drug. Third-quarter 2021 orders have topped more than $150M and continue to grow.

Pharmax, one of the region’s leading manufacturers and distributors of high-quality medications, has partnered with GRA to lead Avigan regulatory, sales and distribution efforts in the UAE. Together, Pharmax and GRA delivered 1.2 million tablets to the Emirates this week for Abu Dhabi-based ADQ’s affiliate RAFED. Since delivery of this order, RAFED has awared a further tender for millions of tablets. “We have been working with the GRA and AiPharma teams to bring Avigan to the UAE to meet the patient and market demand for an effective COVID-19 treatment,” said Dr. Madhukar Tanna, CEO of Pharmax. “Bringing this drug to the UAE market has never been more vital given the current and potential future surges of COVID-19.”

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“This unapproved (yes, unapproved) drug costs $700 per course and the US government has just agreed to buy 1.7m courses. That’s a 1.2 BILLION dollar investment.”

Molnupiravir: Covid Wonder Drug or Money-Making Scam? (OffG)

What happens when you fail in your attempts to create a vaccine for “Covid-19” and then realize you’ve just missed out on a billion-dollar profit-making opportunity? You hurriedly develop a new drug, rush it through a clinical trial (which you yourself design to ensure good results), and then announce it to the world as the Covid cure we’ve all been waiting for, except no one’s been waiting for it because Covid isn’t any more deadly than the flu, and can be treated by easy-to-procure, inexpensive means (if it exists at all). But governments are too stupid to know that and you own most of the corrupt politicians making the decisions, so who cares? As long as they’re willing to invest in your new concoction, it doesn’t even have to be necessary, or safe, or effective, or ethical…

Yes, I’m talking about “Molnupiravir”, Merck’s latest poison being promoted as an effective treatment against covid-19 (hang on, I thought that’s what the vaccines were for?). This unapproved (yes, unapproved) drug costs $700 per course and the US government has just agreed to buy 1.7m courses. That’s a 1.2 BILLION dollar investment. The deal is part of the Biden administration’s pledge to “respond to the health needs of the public”, but, in actuality, it’s simply a money-siphoning operation, with the American public coming off second best. Molnupiravir is being sold to the public as the next big breakthrough in Covid-19 treatment off the back of what appears to be a SINGLE study, which was never even completed. Furthermore, the study was conducted by Merck (the makers of the drug), who chose not to disclose any adverse events. If that isn’t suspicious enough, the study was never published in a peer-reviewed journal.

Media press releases are apparently the new standard when it comes to evaluating medical treatments. After all, why would you wait for independent confirmation of your results or objective peer-review when you can get paid journalists, without a shred of medical expertise, to convince the public that they need your new drug?

Read more …

The experts are everywhere.

There Are No Arguments on the Other Side (eugyppius)

On 3 September, noted German virologist and Corona astrologer Christian Drosten made a series of curious remarks on his state radio podcast. He argued that “scientists should … start thinking about whether it’s … harmful to argue too strongly for [antigen] testing of the vaccinated,” musing that “the vaccinated should also see some advantages from being vaccinated in daily life.” He also expressed hope that the vaccines would in the end make Corona indistinguishable from the common cold, and went so far as to say that he personally hoped for multiple post-vaccination infections: “Immunity from infection,” he said, “is more robust in the long run. My goal as virologist Drosten, is … I want to have vaccine immunity and then, on top of that, I want to have my first infection, and my second, and my third at some point.”

Drosten is basically Germany’s Fauci. He devised the world’s first PCR test for SARS-2, and he has advocated tirelessly for all of the most noxious containment policies. Until the vaccines arrived, he loved nothing so much as mass testing, closed schools, and lockdowns. At one point he even gave a bizarre speech comparing himself to Friedrich Schiller, in which he claimed that this giant of German literature would’ve also worn a mask, and proposed we all live our lives as if we’ve just tested positive for Corona and everyone we meet is old and vulnerable. With a ponderous and philosophically illiterate allusion to Immanuel Kant, he christened this lunatic principle the “pandemic imperative.”

How had a man such as this come to openly wish for multiple SARS-2 infections before millions of admiring listeners? The answer is vaccine failure. Drosten spoke after steep case spikes in the United States and Israel had shown all the world that the SARS-2 vaccines do not stop transmission. These events had destroyed all arguments for Germany’s coercive vaccination policies, along with any lingering hopes that anybody, anywhere would eradicate SARS-2. It was up to Drosten to see how these awkward facts might be sown into the tapestry of virus hysteria that he and the rest of the propaganda apparatus had spent the last 18 months spinning.

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“..grab “tickets” to a “metaverse afterparty” in which NFTs are for sale..”

Zuckerberg Announces Fantasy World Where Facebook Is Not Horrible (Vice)

Moments before announcing Facebook is changing its name to “Meta” and detailing the company’s “metaverse” plans during a Facebook Connect presentation on Thursday, Mark Zuckerberg said “some people will say this isn’t a time to focus on the future,” referring to the massive, ongoing scandal plaguing his company relating to the myriad ways Facebook has made the world worse. “I believe technology can make our lives better. The future will be built by those willing to stand up and say this is the future we want.” The future Zuckerberg went on to pitch was a delusional fever dream cribbed most obviously from dystopian science fiction and misleading or outright fabricated virtual reality product pitches from the last decade.

In the “metaverse—an “embodied” internet where we are, basically, inside the computer via a headset or other reality-modifying technology of some sort—rather than hang out with people in real life you could meet up with them as Casper-the-friendly-ghost-style holograms to do historically fun and stimulating activities such as attend concerts or play basketball. These presentations had the familiar vibe of an overly-ambitious video game reveal. In the concert example, one friend is present in reality while the other is not; the friend joins the concert inexplicably as a blue Force ghost and the pair grab “tickets” to a “metaverse afterparty” in which NFTs are for sale. This theme continued throughout as people wandered seamlessly into virtual fantasy worlds over and over, and the presentation lacked any sense of what this so-called metaverse would look like in practice.

It was flagrantly abstract, even metaphorical, showing more the dream of the metaverse than anything resembling reality. We’re told that two real people, filmed with real cameras on real couches, are in a “digital space.” When Zuckerberg reveals that Facebook is working on augmented reality glasses that could make any of this even a remote possibility, it doesn’t show any actual glasses, only “simulated footage” of augmented reality from a first-person perspective. “We have to fit hologram displays, projectors, batteries, radios, custom silicon chips, cameras, speakers, sensors to map the world around you, and more, into glasses that are five millimeters thick,” Zuckerberg says.

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Oct 082021
 
 October 8, 2021  Posted by at 8:58 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , ,  56 Responses »


Pablo Picasso Swimming 1908

 

Why Is Pfizer Pushing An Untested Vaccine On Children? (TF)
Judge Orders Gov’t To Provide Evidence To Justify Vaccinating Children (TE)
Moderna: A Company “In Need Of A Hail Mary” (Whitney Webb)
Molnupiravir Was Made Possible By Government-funded Innovation (STAT)
Myocarditis Adverse Events in VAERS (SD)
Stop This NOW (Denninger)
The Cult of the Vaccine Neurotic (Taibbi)
The Problems With Censoring Doctors Over Their COVID-19 Stances (RCS)
Biden Keeps Pushing Nonexistent Worker Vaccine Mandate (CTH)
Poland’s Top Court Rules Polish Law Takes Presedence Over The EU (ZH)
Prosecution Of Alleged WikiLeaks Vault 7 Source Hits Multiple Roadblocks (Y!)

 

 

 

 

Biden speech

 

 

“Boys between 16 and 19 years of age had the highest incidence of myocarditis after the second dose . . . The risk of heart problems in boys of that age was about nine times higher than in unvaccinated boys of the same age.”

Why Is Pfizer Pushing An Untested Vaccine On Children? (TF)

The face of Pfizer – Pfizer board member (and former FDA commissioner) Scott Gottlieb, MD – was on CBS Face the Nation today estimating the upcoming availability of the Pfizer vaccine for kids aged 5-11. His key quote: “The FDA has said the review is going to be a matter of weeks, not months. . . that could give you a vaccine by Halloween.” Perhaps more concerning is the fact that Gottlieb is confident Pfizer will get FDA approval. This concern is based on the questionable safety and effectiveness of the Pfizer vaccine for kids aged 5-11, as well as questions over whether there is a need for an emergency use authorization for that segment of the American population.

Pfizer tested the vaccine on a small sample of “2,268 participants 5 to <12 years of age.” Pfizer concluded that the results demonstrated “strong immune response in this cohort of children one month after the second dose.” Pay attention to that last part: “one month after the second dose.” Is that it – is Pfizer pushing this vaccine on children after just one month of efficacy data? (The benefit of the emergency use authorization – studies can be limited.) By now it’s clear this is Pfizer’s pattern: they say the vaccine’s “duration of protection” is “unknown” while data demonstrates its effectiveness wanes over time. Compare the Comirnaty Fact Sheet to the latest reporting on the Pfizer vaccine: One would rightfully assume that the effectiveness of the vaccine will wane in children as it has done in other populations.

One would also be correct to assume this is the rationale for Pfizer to submit its current (one month) data to the FDA, hoping for approval from its friends in government before its study group shows the vaccine has diminishing returns. All that has to do with effectiveness. Now we get to the question of safety. This has always been a pandemic of the oldest among us. According to CDC data, children aged 5-14 years-old have accounted for only 161 COVID-19 deaths since the start of the pandemic. In comparison, this same group has experienced 194 pneumonia deaths. To put these numbers into perspective, the CDC cites over 530,000 COVID-19 deaths for the ages 65 years and up. As New York Magazine observed, “The Kids Were Safe from COVID the Whole Time.”

Those numbers are important when we start to look at the necessity of a vaccine for kids. As with all vaccines, there is a cost-benefit analysis that must be made: do the benefits of the vaccine outweigh the cost? (This is something the FDA and CDC have drilled to the American public – that the benefits of the vaccines outweigh the costs.) Looking at the data, a 17 year-old teenager might properly disregard the vaccine while a 75 year-old might seriously consider it. This is expected. Considerations of costs and benefits get us to the safety of the vaccine for kids aged 5-12. Pfizer proudly announces the vaccine’s side effects for 5-12 year olds is “generally comparable to those observed in participants 16 to 25 years of age.” That’s not good. If you’ve been paying attention, you know why those numbers (ages 16-25) matter. It’s because young people – especially young men – in that age range have an increased risk of developing heart problems after the second Pfizer dose. The younger they are, the greater the risk: “Boys between 16 and 19 years of age had the highest incidence of myocarditis after the second dose . . . The risk of heart problems in boys of that age was about nine times higher than in unvaccinated boys of the same age.”

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“..since teens over the age of 15 had been given the Covid-19 vaccine deaths among the age group had increased by 47%..”

Judge Orders Gov’t To Provide Evidence To Justify Vaccinating Children (TE)

A Judge has ordered the UK Goverment to submit evidence that justifies Covid-19 vaccination of children, giving them a deadline of Monday 11th October. The order from The Hon. Mr Justice Jay is most welcome after we exclusively revealed Thursday 30th September that since teens over the age of 15 had been given the Covid-19 vaccine deaths among the age group had increased by 47% compared to the same period in 2020. We also then delved back into the Office for National Statistics data due to a suspicion we would find the majority of those deaths had been among teenage boys due to the risk of myocardtis, inflammation of the heart muscle, associated with the Pfizer vaccine and mainly occurring in younger males, as well as a correlation with a rise in emergency calls requesting an ambulance due to cardiac arrest, found in Public Health England data.

Unfortunately our fears were confirmed, as we exclusively revealed on Monday 4th October that deaths among teenage boys have increased by 63% in the UK since they started getting the Covid-19 vaccine. To add to that we then exclusively revealed on Tuesday 5th October that Chris Whitty’s decision to overrule the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation and advise the Government to offer the Covid-19 vaccine to all healthy secondary school children, has so far led to a 400% increase in deaths among male children compared to the same period in 2020. (See here) However, people have been fighting in court to overturn the decision of the Chief Medical Officer for England that children should be given an experimental Covid-19 injection, but unfortunately to no avail so far.


The ‘Covid-19 Assembly’ and lawyer Francis Hoar had an application for an urgent hearing to pause the Covid-19 roll-out to under 18’s denied for a second time on September 2nd. The Claimants had asked for just half a day for the Court to listen to oral argument to consider whether to pause the roll out of injections of experimental mRNA vaccine technology, producing increasing reports of clotting and other adverse effects including death, still under emergency authorisation and never before given to humans, to the whole of the healthy population of children aged 12-17. The Court’s view was that to delay consideration of the Claimants’ application for 14 days to allow the government to prepare its response was not in fact a refusal. However, that delay had the practical effect of denying the urgent relief sought and left the full resources and machinery of the state to be put into gear.

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“..without the approval of its booster, which has caused great controversy even among the country’s top vaccine officials, Moderna faces a massive financial reckoning.”

Moderna: A Company “In Need Of A Hail Mary” (Whitney Webb)

Not only did the COVID-19 crisis obliterate hurdles that had previously prevented Moderna from taking a single product to market, it also dramatically reversed the company’s fortunes. Indeed, from 2016 right up until the emergence of COVID-19, Moderna could barely hold it together, as it was shedding key executives, top talent, and major investors at an alarming rate. Essentially, Moderna’s promise of “revolutionizing” medicine and the remarkable salesmanship and fund-raising capabilities of the company’s top executive, Stéphane Bancel, were the main forces keeping it afloat. In the years leading up to the COVID-19 crisis, Moderna’s promises—despite Bancel’s efforts—rang increasingly hollow, as the company’s long-standing penchant for extreme secrecy meant that—despite nearly a decade in business—it had never been able to definitively prove that it could deliver the “revolution” it had continually assured investors was right around the corner.

This was compounded by major issues with patents held by a hostile competitor that threatened Moderna’s ability to turn a profit on anything it might manage to take to market, as well as major issues with its mRNA delivery system that led them to abandon any treatment that would require more than one dose because of toxicity concerns. The latter issue, though largely forgotten and/or ignored by media today, should be a major topic in the COVID-19 booster debate, given that there is still no evidence that Moderna ever resolved the toxicity issue that arose in multi-dose products.

In this first installment of a two-part series, the dire situation in which Moderna found itself immediately prior to the emergence of COVID-19 is discussed in detail, revealing that Moderna—very much like the now disgraced company Theranos—had long been a house of cards with sky-high valuations completely disconnected from reality. Part 2 will explore how that reality would have come crashing down sometime in 2020 or 2021 were it not for the advent of the COVID-19 crisis and Moderna’s subsequent partnership with the US government and the highly unusual processes involving its vaccine’s development and approval. Despite the emergence of real-world data challenging the claims that Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine is safe and effective, Moderna’s booster is being rushed through by some governments, while others have recently banned the vaccine’s use in young adults and teens due to safety concerns.

As this two-part series will show, safety concerns about Moderna were known well before the COVID crisis, yet they have been ignored by health authorities and the media during the crisis itself. In addition, in order to stave off collapse, Moderna must keep selling its COVID-19 vaccine for years to come. In other words, without the approval of its booster, which has caused great controversy even among the country’s top vaccine officials, Moderna faces a massive financial reckoning. While the COVID-19 crisis threw the company a lifeboat, the administration of its COVID-19 vaccine, in which the US government has now invested nearly $6 billion, must continue into the foreseeable future for the bailout to be truly successful.

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Yup, it’s a horse drug. Priceless.

Barron’s behind paywall:
Beware of the new Merck drug: Wall Street Cheered Merck’s Covid Pill. Some Scientists Are Highlighting Its Potential Dangers. Researchers say the drug could integrate itself into patients’ DNA, theoretically leading to cancer. Merck says its tests show that isn’t an issue.

Molnupiravir Was Made Possible By Government-funded Innovation (STAT)

The story behind molnupiravir is intriguing and a testament to government-funded innovation. Molnupiravir, also known as EIDD-2801 or MK-4482, came out of Drug Innovation Ventures at Emory (DRIVE), a not-for-profit LLC owned by Emory University. It had previously demonstrated broad-spectrum activity against other viruses such as influenza, Ebola, and the Venezuelan equine encephalitis virus. The work goes back to 2004, when Emory researchers were studying a related compound known as EIDD-1931/NHC. Before it was tested for Covid-19, EIDD-2801 had accrued millions of dollars of federal funding. In 2019, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) gave the Emory Institute for Drug Development a $16 million contract to test the drug for influenza.

It had previously garnered funding from several other NIAID grants, as well as funding from the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA), as disclosed by Emory. When attention turned to Covid-19, Emory received pledges of more than $30 million from NIAID and the Department of Defense to cover development of the drug. Jumping on an opportunity to develop a promising drug therapy for Covid-19, Ridgeback Biotherapeutics licensed the drug from DRIVE in March 2020. Ridgeback was founded by Wayne and Wendy Holman, both former investment managers. Within just three months, Ridgeback licensed worldwide rights for EIDD-2801 for Covid-19 to Merck, for which Ridgeback received an undisclosed upfront payment plus milestone payments and shared profits.

But before signing on with Merck, Ridgeback had tried to negotiate a deal with the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), one that was specifically mentioned in the explosive whistleblower complaint by Rick Bright, the former director of BARDA. In his complaint, Bright wrote that George Painter, the CEO of the Emory Institute for Drug Development, and Ridgeback cofounder Wendy Holman sought a contract first from ASPR Next and then from BARDA to develop EIDD-2801 for $100 million, and they personally lobbied the authority to get more financial aid. BARDA denied the request due to a lack of adequate documentation for the request. Even before 2020, Bright had been reluctant to give BARDA funding to EIDD-2801, saying they already had $30 million of support from NIAID and the Department of Defense.

Merck eventually backed Ridgeback and took on development of the drug. Molnupiravir then received even more federal funding: In September 2021, BARDA procured 1.7 million courses of the five-day regimen for $1.2 billion, or $700 per treatment course.

Read more …

Exhaustive study by Jessica Rose and Peter McCullough.

Myocarditis Adverse Events in VAERS (SD)

The fact that the VAERS reporting of myocarditis is 6X higher in 15-year-olds following dose 2 may be indicative of a cause-effect relationship. If we assume that following dose 1, a certain percentage of healthy young males who lack co-morbidities or co-factors experience cardiac-related AEs mild enough so as not to dissuade them from receiving dose 2 (ie: pallor, chest pain and shortness of breath, for example), then it is not difficult to imagine that they may have been experiencing symptoms of myocarditis. If a percentage of young males had experienced primary damage to the heart as a result of inflammation following dose 1, then dose 2 may have induced a much more noticeable clinical impact, or cardiac ‘insult’.


In other words, these young males may receive a definitive diagnosis of myocarditis only following dose 2. What this implies, based on these assumptions, is that if there is a causal relationship then it might manifest with overlooked/unreported AEs following dose 1 and a diagnosis of myocarditis following dose 2. It is noteworthy that ‘Vaccine-induced myocarditis’ was in fact used as the descriptor by medical professionals as the reason for the myocarditis in the VAERS database. During phase III clinical trials for the mRNA COVID-19 products, safety was assessed based on a maximum observation period of 6 months. This is not adequate to assess long-term safety outcomes as it is a requirement, even in an accelerated timeline setting, to spend up to 9 months in Phase III trials.

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Karl’s take on that study.

Stop This NOW (Denninger)

VAERS is known to materially under-report adverse events. We do not know what the multiplication factor for these findings is as a consequence of that. Note that in the context of all prior years this basically never happens statistically. The average over the three previous years associated with any vaccination is four. Further, an extraordinary level of cardiac adverse events are associated with these jabs. This is not uncommon or “rare” as claimed; there are in fact, as of July 9th, nearly 130,000 such reports for Covid-19 jabs. If we accept the CDC’s numbers for the number of Americans jabbed this puts the rate of cardiac adverse events are right around one in a hundred! What’s nasty is that while the myocarditis incidence is skewed heavily toward males under 30 the cardiac incidence is not; it is centered in the 20-70 range, or roughly “right up the middle” for the people in the nation as a whole.

Indeed, given the known under-reporting in VAERS a 1-in-100 incidence for a category of serious adverse events is extraordinarily significant. There is every reason to believe we may be causing cardiac injury to as many as one in 25 people who get these shots! Whether those injuries spontaneously resolve without permanent compromise or worse, degenerate progression is completely unknown as nobody is following up these individual cases to measure blood levels (e.g. troponins, EKGs, etc.) in an attempt to determine whether these events are transient or result in permanent impairment or worse. “The only way to understand how common myocarditis is after COVID-19 vaccination, is to perform a prospective cohort study where all vaccinated individuals undergo clinical assessment, ECG, and troponin measurement at regular intervals post-administration.”

Which is not being done, on purpose. Incidentally the markers indicating potential trouble were present in the original studies. They were not followed up and the reason for not doing is obvious: It would have prevented issuance of the EUAs on the original desired schedule. As a result the firms involved and the FDA deliberately ignored that signal in the original studies and we have now jabbed somewhere around 200 million Americans — and may have screwed as many as several million of them with irreversible, or even worse degenerate cardiac damage. We do not know because we intentionally did not look. “COVID-19 injectable products are novel and have a genetic, pathogenic mechanism of action causing uncontrolled expression of SARS-CoV-2 spike protein within human cells. When you combine this fact with the temporal relationship of AE occurrence and reporting, biological plausibility of cause and effect, and the fact that these data are internally and externally consistent with emerging sources of clinical data, it supports a conclusion that the COVID-19 biological products are deterministic for the myocarditis cases observed after injection.”

Again, as we knew and as I have documented before these jabs were first released for widespread use — and again, deliberately ignored. While this paper describes a specific risk with regard to myocarditis in young people the larger issue of cardiac events must not be ignored. While it is certainly true that it in healthy young people the risk from Covid-19 infection itself is minuscule and thus appears on the data to be outweighed by the risks of the jab even without accounting for incomplete reporting in my opinion the 900lb Gorilla in the china shop does not simply lie there.

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It’s a sales job. Always has been.

The Cult of the Vaccine Neurotic (Taibbi)

Yesterday, I ran a story that had nothing to do with vaccines, about the seeming delay of the development of a drug called molnupiravir (see the above segment with the gracious hosts of The Hill: Rising for more). In the time it took to report and write that piece, conventional wisdom turned against the drug, which is now suspected of ivermectinism and other deviationist, anti-vax tendencies, in the latest iteration of our most recent collective national mania — the Cult of the Vaccine Neurotic. The speed of the change was incredible. Just a week ago, on October 1st, the pharmaceutical giant Merck issued a terse announcement that quickly became big news. Molnupiravir, an experimental antiviral drug, “reduced the risk of hospitalization or death” of Covid-19 patients by as much as 50%, according to a study.

The “first draft of history” stories that rushed out in the ensuing minutes and hours were almost uniformly positive. AP called the news a “potentially major advance in efforts to fight the pandemic,” while National Geographic quoted a Yale specialist saying, “Having a pill that would be easy for people to take at home would be terrific.” Another interesting early reaction came from Time: Vaccines will be the way out of the pandemic, but not everyone around the world is immunized yet, and the shots aren’t 100% effective in protecting people from getting infected with the COVID-19 virus. So antiviral drug treatments will be key to making sure that people who do get infected don’t get severely ill. This is what news looks like before propagandists get their hands on it. Time writer Alice Park’s lede was sensible and clear. If molnupiravir works — a big if, incidentally — it’s good news for everyone, since not everyone is immunized, and the vaccines aren’t 100% effective anyway. As even Vox put it initially, molnupiravir could “help compensate for persistent gaps in Covid-19 vaccination coverage.”

Within a day, though, the tone of coverage turned. Writers began stressing a Yeah, but approach, as in, “Any new treatment is of course good, but get your fucking shot.” A CNN lede read, “A pill that could potentially treat Covid-19 is a ‘game-changer,’ but experts are emphasizing that it’s not an alternative to vaccinations.” The New York Times went with, “Health officials said the drug could provide an effective way to treat Covid-19, but stressed that vaccines remained the best tool.” If you’re thinking it was only a matter of time before the mere fact of molnupiravir’s existence would be pitched in headlines as actual bad news, you’re not wrong: Marketwatch came out with “‘It’s not a magic pill’: What Merck’s antiviral pill could mean for vaccine hesitancy” the same day Merck issued its release. The piece came out before we knew much of anything concrete about the drug’s effectiveness, let alone whether it was “magic.”

Bloomberg’s morose “No, the Merck pill won’t end the pandemic” was released on October 2nd, i.e. one whole day after the first encouraging news of a possible auxiliary treatment whose most ardent supporters never claimed would end the pandemic. This article said the pill might be cause to celebrate, but warned its emergence “shouldn’t be cause for complacency when it comes to the most effective tool to end this pandemic: vaccines.” Bloomberg randomly went on to remind readers that the unrelated drug ivermectin is a “horse de-worming agent,” before adding that if molnupiravir ends up “being viewed as a solution for those who refuse to vaccinate,” the “Covid virus will continue to persist.”

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“Your hospital is reluctant to change their well-established protocols. Most of your intubated patients are dying. What do you do?”

The Problems With Censoring Doctors Over Their COVID-19 Stances (RCS)

Everyone has a right to their opinion. The question is: does everyone have a right to voice their opinion? Increasingly, in these strange times, it seems that we physicians have the right to voice only certain opinions, when it comes to discussing Covid-19. Wanting to hit the mute button on physicians who choose to challenge the public health narrative, especially in regard to vaccination for Covid-19, is understandably tempting. We carry a bit more authority than lawyers or statisticians when we share our thoughts about medical matters; and quite a few physicians seem to have little interest in toeing the party line. However, appealing as it might be to silence these voices, succumbing to the temptation of censorship might end up costing our society more than it gains.

Imagine this: you’re a physician in charge of opening an intensive care unit in New York City for Covid-19 patients in March 2020 as the disease is tearing through the city. You notice that the standard protocols your hospital follows for intubated patients seem to be failing, perhaps injuring, your patients with Covid-19. Rumblings from Chinese intensivists, and publications from Italian physician Luciano Gattitoni, imply that intubation and ventilator management should be reconsidered in this new disease. Your hospital is reluctant to change their well-established protocols. Most of your intubated patients are dying. What do you do? Dr Cameron Kyle-Sidell experienced this dilemma — and then posted a video on YouTube on March 31, 2020, watched nearly a million times, in which he described his experiences caring for Covid-19 patients in respiratory failure.

In the video, Kyle-Sidell shared that existing treatment protocols for patients with severe pneumonia did not seem to apply to Covid-19 patients with dangerously low oxygen levels — they could be intubated later, and their lungs were less stiff and required lower ventilation pressures, than typical severe pneumonia patients. His warning was part of an alarm that was raised by others, as well, which did indeed lead to a rapid shift in management of severely ill Covid-19 patients. He also ended up stepping down from his leadership of the ICU due to disagreement with hospital management; and some of those hundreds of thousands of viewers of his YouTube video concluded that his perhaps poorly-worded comparison of Covid-19 lung disease to high altitude sickness was cause to consider the pandemic a hoax.

Was Dr Kyle-Sidell a hero for sticking his neck out and challenging the prevailing dogma, in a sincere attempt to improve outcomes for severely ill Covid-19 patients? Or should his video have been censored, and perhaps his medical license threatened, for questioning the conventional narrative in ways that could be co-opted by conspiracy theorists?

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“..without an actual policy or regulation visibly in place, state attorneys general cannot file a lawsuit or request an injunction..”

Biden Keeps Pushing Nonexistent Worker Vaccine Mandate (CTH)

Joe Biden did it again today. A month after the first announcement, the White House occupant claimed again a Dept of Labor rule (via OSHA) is forthcoming, yet no such process appears to be taking place. This ploy now seems very purposeful, because without an actual policy or regulation visibly in place, state attorneys general cannot file a lawsuit or request an injunction. As long as Biden keeps threatening a DOL worker vaccination rule sometime in the future, many employers will take action to require worker vaccination. This seems to be the actual strategy; bolstered by White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki caught off-guard last week when asked about it. Psaki had no idea how to answer the question about any OSHA activity not taking place.

Obviously Psaki didn’t expect the question, but it was also obvious that no background conversation had ever taken place amid the White House communication team. Perhaps responding to an awakening on that issue, Joe Biden gave a speech today begging people to get vaccinated and again warning that a federal vaccine mandate for all workers was coming: TRANSCRIPT – […] The Labor Department is going to shortly issue an emergency rule — which I asked for several weeks ago, and they’re going through the process — to require all employees [employers] with more than 100 people, whether they work for the federal government or not — this is within a — in the purview of the Labor Department — to ensure their workers are fully vaccinated or face testing at least once a week. In total, this Labor Department vaccination requirement will cover 100 million Americans, about two thirds of all the people who work in America. These requirements work. […] And as the Business Roundtable and others told me when I announced the first requirement, that encouraged businesses to feel they could come in and demand the same thing of their employees.”

Biden then went on to praise companies who are doing it on their own. Others are starting to notice as this article in the Federalist notes: […] According to several sources, so far it appears no such mandate has been sent to the White House’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs yet for approval. The White House, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), and the Department of Labor haven’t released any official guidance for the alleged mandate. There is no executive order. There’s nothing but press statements. Despite what you may have been falsely led to believe by the media fantasy projection machine, press statements have exactly zero legal authority.

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“The primacy of constitutional law over other sources of law results directly from the Constitution of the Republic of Poland..”

Poland’s Top Court Rules Polish Law Takes Presedence Over The EU (ZH)

In a stinging rebuke to Europe’s unelected bureaucrats, and a major escalation in the rule of law crisis between Warsaw and Brussels, Poland’s constitutional court ruled on Thursday that Polish law can take precedence over EU law amid an ongoing dispute between the European bloc and the eastern European member state. The decision by the Constitutional Tribunal came after Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki requested a review of a decision by the EU’s Court of Justice (ECJ) that gave the bloc’s law primacy. Two out of 14 judges on the panel dissented from the majority opinion. “The attempt by the European Court of Justice to involve itself with Polish legal mechanisms violates … the rules that give priority to the constitution and rules that respect sovereignty amid the process of European integration,” the ruling said, in an outcome that could have wide-reaching consequences for Europe when the next crisis hits.

Meanwhile, Brussels considers the Constitutional Tribunal illegitimate due to the political influence imposed upon Poland’s judiciary by the ruling Law and Justice party (PiS). As the FT’s Henry Foy notes, it is “Hard to overstate the importance of this ruling.” He goes on to note that “Poland is *the* EU success story of eastern enlargement, and the biggest recipient – by a long long way – of EU taxpayer money since 2004. And now it is saying that it refuses to recognize a fundamental part of the whole project.” As DW reports, the court had looked specifically at the compatibility of provisions from EU treaties, which are used by the European Commission to justify having a say in the rule of law in member states, with Poland’s constitution.

A ruling by the ECJ in March said that the EU can force member states to disregard certain provisions in national law, including constitutional law. The ECJ says that Poland’s recently implemented procedure for appointing members of its Supreme Court amounts to a violation of EU law. The ruling from the ECJ could potentially force Poland to repeal parts of the controversial judicial reform. Meanwhile, the EU is withholding billions of euros of aid for post-pandemic rebuilding in Poland over concerns that the rule of law is being degraded in the country. “The primacy of constitutional law over other sources of law results directly from the Constitution of the Republic of Poland,” PiS government spokesman Piotr Muller wrote on Twitter after the court’s decision. “Today (once again) this has been clearly confirmed by the Constitutional Tribunal.”

However, the EPP group, the center-right bloc in the European Parliament to which PiS belongs, come out strongly against the court’s ruling: “It’s hard to believe the Polish authorities and the PiS Party when they claim that they don’t want to put an end to Poland’s membership of the EU. Their actions go in the opposite direction. Enough is enough,” Jeroen Lenaers, MEP and spokesperson for the group, said. “The Polish Government has lost its credibility. This is an attack on the EU as a whole,” he added. Previously, the European Parliament called on Morawiecki to cancel the court case in a resolution passed last month. It stressed the “fundamental nature of primacy of EU law as a cornerstone principle of EU law”, which however now is put in doubt.

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Scapegoat?

“Schulte, who had worked at an elite CIA hacking unit, said that whoever leaked the Vault 7 documents “deserved to be executed” and that “no traitors ever came from Texas”..”

Prosecution Of Alleged WikiLeaks Vault 7 Source Hits Multiple Roadblocks (Y!)

The prosecution of the former CIA operative accused of providing WikiLeaks with the biggest theft of agency documents in U.S. history continues to be mired in delays and legal issues, drawing out a painful chapter for the agency. WikiLeaks’ publication in 2017 of documents that included CIA hacking tools, which it called Vault 7, so enraged some senior officials, including then-CIA Director Mike Pompeo, that it sparked discussions within the agency and the Trump White House about kidnapping or even killing WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, according to a Yahoo News investigation. The first trial of Joshua Schulte, the former CIA programmer accused of transmitting the documents to WikiLeaks, ended in a hung jury in March 2020. (Schulte was, however, convicted of related minor charges and remains jailed.)

It was a stinging defeat for federal prosecutors in New York’s Southern District, who vowed to retry the former agency operative. The retrial, which has already been repeatedly postponed, was last scheduled for late October. In September, Schulte, who is now representing himself in court, asked for another delay. The parties are now supposed to confer on a new trial date by Nov. 1, as Inner City Press first reported, but it is unclear precisely when the alleged WikiLeaks source will face another jury. WikiLeaks began publishing Vault 7 documents in March 2017. The leak was “instantly devastating,” said the prosecutor in the case, causing “critical intelligence gathering operations all over the world” to come to “a crashing halt.” Agency investigators later called the leak “the largest data loss in CIA history.”

Before WikiLeaks began publishing the Vault 7 materials, the CIA had no idea they had even been taken. The leak set off a furious search for the culprit. The CIA would soon determine that the files had been stolen in the spring of 2016 by Schulte, a disgruntled agency employee who quit his job within the CIA four months before WikiLeaks began releasing Vault 7 materials. FBI officials, who code-named Schulte “Kinetic Piranha” or “Kinetic Panda,” confronted him in March 2017 in the New York City office lobby of his new employer, Bloomberg LP. In subsequent interviews with bureau officials, Schulte, who had worked at an elite CIA hacking unit, said that whoever leaked the Vault 7 documents “deserved to be executed” and that “no traitors ever came from Texas” (he is a native of Lubbock, Texas).

Schulte has continued to deny any wrongdoing. Interviewing him at a restaurant across from Grand Central Terminal, FBI agents presented Schulte with a grand jury subpoena and a separate subpoena to seize his phone. Bureau personnel then also executed a search warrant of his apartment. Schulte was first arrested in August 2017 after investigators said they had found “approximately ten thousand images and videos of child pornography” while searching his electronic devices. In June 2018, prosecutors charged him with providing the materials to WikiLeaks.

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Veritas Pfizer fetal tissue

 

 

 

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Oct 062021
 
 October 6, 2021  Posted by at 8:51 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , ,  30 Responses »


Pablo Picasso Five women 1907

 

Mandating Vaccinations For Domestic Flights (Gato Malo)
Wuhan and US Scientists Planned To Create A New Coronavirus In 2018 (DM)
What Is The REAL Long-Term Impairment? (Denninger)
The Extraordinary Hypocrisy of Molnupiravir (PR)
Ivermectin – Truth and Totalitarianism (Hope)
Oh, You Flashed A VexPass? (Denninger)
How New Zealand Snookered Itself By Calling Time On Zero Covid (G.)
Pentagon Sets Nov. 22 Deadline For Civilian Employees To Get Vaccinated (JTN)
New York Expands Covid-19 Vaccine Pass Program (JTN)
Canadian Government’s Proposed Online Harms Legislation (CBC)
Democrats and Media Do Not Want to Weaken Facebook (Greenwald)

 

 

 

 

military purge

 

 

Biden Kerry AUKUS

 

 

Safe! Effective!

Mandating Vaccinations For Domestic Flights (Gato Malo)

Watching Ashish Jha, blight of the Gato alma mater, wade into the debate on vaccine mandates for air travel and prove once more that schools of “public health” are the “biology for aggrievement studies majors” of the university systems cannot help but dishearten one. It would be sad were it not so pernicious. There has not been a single reported superspread on a plane. None. There have been about a zillion flights. So this, right there, seems a bizarre fight to pick. Even his tweet seems to admit that this has not been a spread vector or a risk. But he has a “story” that “confirms this need.” It must be a heckuva story.

Just what kind of story would make vaccine mandates needed on airplanes when it’s now a completely established fact that these are non-sterilizing vaccines? Even the CDC threw in the towel on this in early august. And we’ve had buckets of data since then that not only are vaccines non-sterilizing (unable to stop infection or stop spread) but that they are actually spread enhancing. The UK vaccine surveillance report is VERY clear on this. VE for cases is -60% in many age brackets. this is data straight from their report and this is the rigged data that only looks at “fully vaccinated” people more than 14 days after their second dose and ignores the whole worry window after dose 1. reality is worse than this. but this is plenty bad all on its own…

added VE’s in red. (under 18 should be broadly ignored as so few are vaxxed and the injected bias makes the data more artifact than signal, especially due to extreme testing rates among unvaccinated school (and college) kids. This renders 18-29 suspect as well. This really all needs to be controlled for tests per 100k by vaxx status.)

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“The proposal was rejected and the database of viral strains at the Wuhan Institute of Virology was taken offline some 18 months later, making it impossible to check what scientists there were working on.”

Wuhan and US Scientists Planned To Create A New Coronavirus In 2018 (DM)

US and Chinese scientists were planning to create a new coronavirus before the pandemic erupted, leaked proposals show. Last month, a grant application submitted to the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa) revealed that an international team of scientists had planned to mix genetic data of similar strains to create a new virus. The grant application was made in 2018 and leaked to Drastic, the pandemic origins analysis group. ‘We will compile sequence/RNAseq data from a panel of closely related strains and compare full length genomes, scanning for unique SNPs representing sequencing errors. ‘Consensus candidate genomes will be synthesised commercially using established techniques and genome-length RNA and electroporation to recover recombinant viruses,’ the application states.

This would result in a virus which had no clear ancestor in nature, a World Health Organization (WHO) expert told The Telegraph. The expert, who asked the paper not to publish their name, said that, if such a method had been carried out, it could explain why no close match has ever been found in nature for Sars-CoV-2. The closest naturally occurring virus is the Banal-52 strain, reported in Laos last month. It shares 96.8 per cent of Covid-19’s genome. No direct ancestor, which would be expected share around 99.98 per cent, has been found so far. The WHO expert told The Telegraph that the process detailed in the application would create ‘a new virus sequence, not a 100 per cent match to anything.’

‘They would then synthesise the viral genome from the computer sequence, thus creating a virus genome that did not exist in nature but looks natural as it is the average of natural viruses. ‘Then they put that RNA in a cell and recover the virus from it. ‘This creates a virus that has never existed in nature, with a new ‘backbone’ that didn’t exist in nature but is very, very similar as it’s the average of natural backbones,’ the expert said. The proposal was rejected and the database of viral strains at the Wuhan Institute of Virology was taken offline some 18 months later, making it impossible to check what scientists there were working on. The institute’s scientists have consistently denied creating the coronavirus in their lab. The grant application proposal was submitted by British zoologist Peter Daszak on behalf of a group, which included Daszak EcoHealth Alliance, the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the University of North Carolina and Duke NUS in Singapore, The Telegraph reported.

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“2 days from exposure to you’re ****ed”

What Is The REAL Long-Term Impairment? (Denninger)

The reports all over social media and among people who have been jabbed strongly implies that the long-term or even permanent impairment rate is likely somewhere around one in a hundred persons jabbed. That’s an utterly ridiculous adverse event rate and in any normal set of circumstances would never be acceptable for anyone with other than a condition that would be terminal if not treated, such as cancer. We already know (because its been leaked by whistleblowers) that hospital and other medical staff are being directly told not to file VAERS reports and, in some cases, threatened with disciplinary action or termination should they violate that mandate. There are also those who refuse to seek medical attention as doing so would conclusively blow up their mental belief, part of the Stockholm Syndrome-style insanity that has gripped the world in the era of Covid, that what they did was “safe and effective.”

Never mind the write-up out of Israel that has now proved quite-conclusively that vaccination is worthless to prevent acquisition and propagation of the virus and that personal protection in terms of severe and fatal outcomes has a high probability of being seriously attenuated or even entirely absent within six months. An attack rate of more than 20% of the patients where 95.2% of them were fully vaccinated makes quite clear that even nearly-100% coverage, which can never be achieved, does nothing of value from a standpoint of cutting off infection. It may provide some personal protection against severe infection outcomes, but whether this is a “good bargain” when measured against the risk of permanent impairment from the jab itself is a much tougher call.

The other problem that the Israeli study presents is that one of these cases was a person who had Covid and recovered but then took a single jab. Did that jab destroy their resistance from previous infection? Nobody knows and the data set is too small to draw conclusions, since only one person was in this circumstance. But this is absolutely on the table given the fact that it happened, and if true jabbing people who recovered may well have been a big part of the surge we just took in the summer by turning recovered and immune people back into susceptible ones! What’s even worse is that in such a person a severe outcome was astronomically-unlikely in the first place so the “personal protection” argument for getting jabbed appears to have been voided.

What’s worse is that of the attacked patients five died including the index, who was vaccinated. These were all older, fairly-morbid people — but the fact of the matter is that both masking and jabs failed to protect them from a fatal outcome. “.. all transmissions between patients and staff occurred between masked and vaccinated individuals, as experienced in an outbreak from Finland [12]”. In addition all of the transmission happened with people both wearing PPE and being vaccinated, so the presumption has to be that neither masking or jabs are effective to provide protection and using both in combination does nothing either. Finally, and perhaps most-damningly, is the presence of evidence, albeit not convincing due to small sample size, in this write-up of severe immune compromise from the jabs that promoted infection severity in the people who got attacked. Why? Right here:

“Infection advanced rapidly (many cases became symptomatic within 2 days of exposure), and viral load was high.” This is consistent with other anecdotal reports of jabbed people who get a severe alleged “breakthrough” case go from being entirely-fine to screwed almost-immediately, which is an extreme outlier among the general population exposed, including when exposed to Delta but unvaccinated. I can speak to that with personal knowledge since I and two others were infected by a known index during a time that Delta was the only statistically-important variant circulating and none of us had that sort of “2 days from exposure to you’re ****ed” experience.

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“Merck and NIH allowed 14.1% of people in the control arms to develop severe COVID-19 and die with no treatment. None. Just placebo.”

The Extraordinary Hypocrisy of Molnupiravir (PR)

Trigger alert: This article may upset those who care about other human beings.Molnupiravir (mull-noo-’peer-aveer) is the talk of the town, belle of the ball in the press. “Game changer” is the word on the street, according to a message to Science Insider: “Molnupiravir is unquestionably a game changer! The large effect size, and the ease of administration change the paradigm of mild COVID-19 treatment with a potential to reduce COVID-19 death rates.” See: Science Magazine The hype even included Fauci going on in an interview about how the idea that molnupiravir is so effective that the vaccine won’ t be needed. “That’s such a false narrative” Fauci aped at the camera.

What’s all the excitement & hype about? Well for one, Merck reported no deaths in the molnupirvir group, but there were eight deaths in the placebo group. Great news, right? Hold on there. This is an interim analysis. On non-hospitalized patients. (See the Phase 3 MOVe-OUT trial record at ClinicalTrials.gov) Why, when the litany of studies have been published on the efficacy of off-label use of hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin, has the media been silent or hostile to the published studies? When meta-analyses find that the studies – both randomized clinical trials and observational studies – spanning the range of prophylaxis, mild, moderate and severe COVID-19 support immediate adoption for early treatment using ivermectin especially – why in the world is Merck’s molnupirvir interim analysis given the spotlight?

Slow Down, People. The Molnupirvir Study is ONE Study (And It’s Not Even a Study) In Non-Hospitalized People Without HIV, Hepatitis or Liver Disease. And the Hospitalized Patients – They’re Found in A SECOND, BURIED Study. Before we get too excited about molnupirvir, let’s remember that there are 29 studies on ivermectin and 32 studies on hydroxychloroquine totaling over 26,000 and 54,000 patients combined, respectively. Merck’s non-peer-reviewed molnupirvir interim analysis report study? Only 775 patients. According to the US press, with 775 patients in the Merck study, 7.3% of patients given molnupiravir were either hospitalized or died 9 days after treatment, compared to the 14.1% of placebo patients. None died, but 7.3% were hospitalized.

And 14.1% on placebo died. Placebo? Died? When there is a vast amount of published research on clear winners are the early treatment protocols as described by the medical authorities on the matter? Merck and NIH allowed 14.1% of people in the control arms to develop severe COVID-19 and die with no treatment. None. Just placebo. How did the NIH and the FDA let this happen in the face of the evidence of efficacy of early treatment? How could they? Because that’s the standard of care for early COVID-19: go home, incubate, get sick, and die if you must. But don’t call us until you are seriously ill.

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Lots of references.

Ivermectin – Truth and Totalitarianism (Hope)

“Merck stock surged 10% Friday after it said its investigational pill cuts the risk of hospitalization and death in COVID-19 patients…The pill reduced the risk of hospitalization or death by about 50%,” Merck and its partner, Ridgeback Biotherapeutics, said in a statement Friday. “This is a phenomenal result. This is a profound game-changer to have an oral pill that had this kind of effect, this magnitude of effect in patients who are at high risk who are already symptomatic,” former FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb said Friday on CNBC about results of the interim analysis. “Meanwhile, shares of COVID vaccine makers Pfizer and Moderna fell 2.5% and 10%, respectively.”

This puts Dr. Scott Gottlieb between a rock and a hard place. On the one hand, as a member of Pfizer’s Board of Directors, he is paid handsomely to attend a few board meetings per year, yet on the other hand, he must not be too glowing in his praise of the antiviral, which might lead people away from the Pfizer vaccine. Moreover, it could affect sales just as it has already dropped the stock price. In 2020, Gottlieb was paid $338,587 by Pfizer. In 2020, he also earned $525,850 as a director of Illumina. Due to his former FDA Chief status, Gottlieb is in high demand as one word of favor from him can send a stock price soaring. He has served on multiple other boards, including Tempus Labs, National Resilience, and the Mount Sinai Health System. It must be a daunting task to walk the line by promoting one corporate interest while not offending any of the others.

But the good news is that soon, Pfizer, too, will be peddling their antiviral drug, which should make up for any drop in their vaccine sales. “Pfizer is testing whether its pill—PF-07321332—can prevent infection in people exposed to the virus or benefit patients who have not been hospitalized with COVID-19.” Roche and Atea are not far behind with their antiviral pills, and soon all of Big Pharma can get in on the action. They have timed it perfectly. While shutting down any competition from repurposed drugs like HCQ or Ivermectin, they deftly rolled out the vaccines first, making sure not to confuse the consumer with antiviral pills that would only be allowed AFTER the majority of the population had been vaccinated.

The one glitch is that Merck’s Molnupiravir only surfaced AFTER a prominent scandal involving Merck lying three times. Just as Peter would disown Christ three times before the cry of the rooster, Merck would turn their back on their creation with three lies about Ivermectin before they would accept the payoff from the United States government. On February 4, 2021, Merck, the corporation behind the monumental Mectizan Program, which rescued the world from River Blindness, told three untruths about Ivermectin.

Lie #1: No scientific basis for a potential therapeutic effect against COVID-19 from preclinical studies; Lie #2: No meaningful evidence for clinical activity or clinical efficacy in patients with COVID-19 disease. Lie #3: A concerning lack of safety data in the majority of studies. However, the Monash preclinical study disproved the first statement showing a massive 99.98% reduction in viral load with a single Ivermectin treatment in cell culture.

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Medical privacy.

Oh, You Flashed A VexPass? (Denninger)

Note that for a private fact to exist it must be private. There is an exception in the law for things that are newsworthy and of legitimate public concern but absent that medical status is one of the areas where this law is routinely upheld. If you make known to others without a legal duty of confidentiality that you are HIV+, for example, you cannot sue if someone discloses that because it’s not private anymore. Once you willingly make something public by your own actions it is not possible to return that item of information to the status of a private fact. There are things that we remove from the status of “private facts” willingly and by our own hand. Our true identity, for one. You flash a driver license to prove you’re 21 at a bar, for example. Said bar has zero duty of confidentiality to you.

There are all manner of places where such is requested and we willingly comply. By doing so we waive the private fact nature of that information since we willingly and intentionally display it in public. If you go to a professional conference, for example, and flash a vax card or a digital app QR code at the door to “attest” that you had a Covid-19 vaccination you have released that information to people who have no duty in law or by contract to keep that information private. Said app developer and owner has no legal stricture requiring said privacy either. Further, by definition your mere presence in such a place, if such a pass is required for entry, voluntarily discloses your medical status to thousands of others! Again: Your mere presence in a business — any business — that requires such at the door waives your private fact protection.

I remind you that anyone can photograph you from or in a public place. Never mind that damn near everywhere such is happening all the time in public anyway; there’s a camera behind the bar in the restaurant, three more in the dining area, etc. If you’re walking down the street these days your next door neighbor probably has a camera on their doorbell and you were in a public place, namely, the street. The minute you consent to a requirement for your medical status in some regard to be in a place open to the public you have, by definition and your own hand, destroyed any claim now or in the future that such is a private fact. Thus you have now consented to your employer requiring you to document same since you already have made your Covid vaccination status available to the public on an unrestricted basis.

If and when something related to that (e.g. whether you have taken the sixth booster two years from now) is required of you you have already consented to that disclosure and discrimination because you, by your own hand, voluntarily gave up all right of privacy in that regard and consented to be discriminated against. Note that prior to Covid-19 there was exactly zero such attempt made. Oh, people say, but the schools required vaccinations for kids. Ah, but said entities were government agencies and had strict protocols for medical privacy. Further, there were plenty of kids who didn’t have all those shots in the school — but nobody knew who they were. If you had an exemption on whatever basis that was nobody else’s business and exactly nobody had access to those records. Finally, I attended college briefly in the 1980s (and took some classes while in High School too at a different college) and was never asked for a single bit of medical documentation before or while doing so. All they were interested in was money.

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For a fast increasing number of people, freedom is something granted to you by goverment. Scary.

How New Zealand Snookered Itself By Calling Time On Zero Covid (G.)

The New Zealand government called time on its world-leading Covid-19 elimination strategy on Monday, announcing a suite of measures that grant Aucklanders greater freedom after seven weeks of community transmission, despite experts urging tighter restrictions. In doing so, the government has snookered itself in three mutually-reinforcing ways: on social license, on enforcement, and on the economy. New Zealand’s strategy depends on social license, and people feeling like they understand and are part of the system, and can contribute to its success, knowing others will be prevented from undermining their efforts. This has proceeded partly from prime minister Jacinda Ardern’s personal popularity and the excellence of her communications, but more from her resolve and the strong alignment of her policies with the expert consensus in favour of continued elimination.

It has worked well. And social license has also been rooted in a transparent, understandable system that lets well-informed non-experts anticipate policy decisions and feel validated when they come to pass. Two weeks ago, when the government moved from alert level four to three despite untraced community transmission, its policies began to diverge from the consensus, and on Monday the gap widened further. On Sunday, the day before the announcement, a group of experts from the University of Otago urged the government to do more to ensure the safety of vulnerable communities in Auckland. Instead, the government did less. As a result, the government’s decisions are now less comprehensible to people who have spent 18 months observing the outbreak and response. Ardern, who remains enormously popular, had fewer cheerleaders on Monday night than she did on Sunday.

The most immediate policy shift will allow Aucklanders to gather outdoors in small groups from Wednesday. This means enforcement is now essentially impossible at any scale, because when you tell a million people who have been stuck inside for two months they can go and have a drink at the beach or in a park, that is what they will do and a certain number of them will not follow the rules. Police have taken a hands off approach to enforcement of illegal gatherings, most notably refusing to break up a rally of more than 1,000 anti-lockdown protesters who gathered at the Auckland Domain on Saturday. This was wise, because provoking a confrontation could have done enormous harm to social cohesion. But if police now start arresting people for low-level breaches, they will further erode social license. The authorities have snookered themselves.

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Including contractors.

Pentagon Sets Nov. 22 Deadline For Civilian Employees To Get Vaccinated (JTN)

The Department of Defense has set Nov. 22 as the deadline for civilian employees to get fully vaccinated against COVID-19. In a memorandum Tuesday, Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks announced the deadline, noting that the last day to get the second jab is Nov. 8. The memo also states that civilian employees must be ready to provide a copy of their vaccination records to the appropriate management departments. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin ordered the entire military, including civilian employees and contractors, to be fully vaccinated following Pfizer-BioNTech’s vaccine being approved by the Food and Drug Administration. Employees who do not comply face termination, without any separation benefits. Service members and civilian employees can apply for a medical or religious exemption.

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The feds can’t mandate it, so they use the states to do that.

New York Expands Covid-19 Vaccine Pass Program (JTN)

New York is expanding its COVID-19 vaccination pass program to allow residents who’ve been vaccinated in other states to prove they’ve gotten their shots or tested negative for the virus. On Tuesday, Gov. Kathy Hochul announced that New York state’s Excelsior Pass Scanner app – which allows businesses to verify a person’s COVID-19 vaccination – has been updated to enable the validation of SMART Health Cards from out-of-staters. Hochul said the changes are based on federal and state COVID-19 guidance and will help more New York businesses stay afloat with the winter months approaching. “New York was hit hard by COVID-19, and we have led bold efforts to pursue innovative solutions to reinvigorate economies,” she said in a statement.


“We’re expanding this solution even further with a set of standards that can be used and validated by all businesses for free, nationwide, based on shared policies and commitments New Yorkers trust.” The move will allow New York businesses participating in the Excelsior Pass program to verify vaccination and negative COVID-19 tests for people from states that issue SMART Health Cards, including California, Hawaii, Louisiana and Virginia. Washington state is in the process of setting up its SMART card system. New York’s digital pass, which was unveiled by former Gov. Andrew Cuomo in March, allows people to download an app to show proof of vaccination or a negative COVID-19 test.

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Canada is lost like Australia.

Canadian Government’s Proposed Online Harms Legislation (CBC)

The Canadian government is considering new rules to regulate how social media platforms moderate potentially harmful user-generated content. Already, the proposed legislation has been criticized by internet scholars — across the political spectrum — as some of the worst in the world. [..] The legislation is simple. First, online platforms would be required to proactively monitor all user speech and evaluate its potential for harm. Online communication service providers would need to take “all reasonable measures,” including the use of automated systems, to identify harmful content and restrict its visibility. Second, any individual would be able to flag content as harmful. The social media platform would then have 24 hours from initial flagging to evaluate whether the content was in fact harmful.

Failure to remove harmful content within this period would trigger a stiff penalty: up to three per cent of the service provider’s gross global revenue or $10 million, whichever is higher. For Facebook, that would be a penalty of $2.6 billion per post. Proactive monitoring of user speech presents serious privacy issues. Without restrictions on proactive monitoring, national governments would be able to significantly increase their surveillance powers. The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms protects all Canadians from unreasonable searches. But under the proposed legislation, a reasonable suspicion of illegal activity would not be necessary for a service provider, acting on the government’s behalf, to conduct a search. All content posted online would be searched.

Potentially harmful content would be stored by the service provider and transmitted — in secret — to the government for criminal prosecution. Canadians who have nothing to hide still have something to fear. Social media platforms process billions of pieces of content every day. Proactive monitoring is only possible with an automated system. Yet automated systems are notoriously inaccurate. Even Facebook’s manual content moderation accuracy has been reported to be below 90 per cent. Social media companies are not like newspapers; accurately reviewing every piece of content is operationally impossible. The outcome is uncomfortable: Many innocent Canadians will be referred for criminal prosecution under the proposed legislation.

But it gets worse. If an online communication service provider determined that your content was not harmful within the tight 24-hour review period, and the government later decided otherwise, the provider would lose up to three per cent of their gross global revenue. Accordingly, any rational platform would censor far more content than the strictly illegal. Human rights scholars call this troubling phenomenon “collateral censorship.”

Read more …

That whistleblower is bad theater.

Democrats and Media Do Not Want to Weaken Facebook (Greenwald)

When Facebook, Google, Twitter and other Silicon Valley social media companies were created, they did not set out to become the nation’s discourse police. Indeed, they affirmatively wanted not to do that. Their desire to avoid that role was due in part to the prevailing libertarian ideology of a free internet in that sub-culture. But it was also due to self-interest: the last thing social media companies wanted to be doing is looking for ways to remove and block people from using their product and, worse, inserting themselves into the middle of inflammatory political controversies. Corporations seek to avoid angering potential customers and users over political stances, not courting that anger.


This censorship role was not one they so much sought as one that was foisted on them. It was not really until the 2016 election, when Democrats were obsessed with blaming social media giants (and pretty much everyone else except themselves) for their humiliating defeat, that pressure began escalating on these executives to start deleting content liberals deemed dangerous or false and banning their adversaries from using the platforms at all. As it always does, the censorship began by targeting widely disliked figures — Milo Yiannopoulos, Alex Jones and others deemed “dangerous” — so that few complained (and those who did could be vilified as sympathizers of the early offenders). Once entrenched, the censorship net then predictably and rapidly spread inward (as it invariably does) to encompass all sorts of anti-establishment dissidents on the right, the left, and everything in between.

And no matter how much it widens, the complaints that it is not enough intensify. For those with the mentality of a censor, there can never be enough repression of dissent. And this plot to escalate censorship pressures found the perfect vessel in this stunningly brave and noble Facebook heretic who emerged this week from the shadows into the glaring spotlight. She became a cudgel that Washington politicians and their media allies could use to beat Facebook into submission to their censorship demands. In this dynamic we find what the tech and culture writer Curtis Yarvin calls “power leak.” This is a crucial concept for understanding how power is exercised in American oligarchy, and Yarvin’s brilliant essay illuminates this reality as well as it can be described.


Hyperbolically arguing that “Mark Zuckerberg has no power at all,” Yarvin points out that it may appear that the billionaire Facebook CEO is powerful because he can decide what will and will not be heard on the largest information distribution platform in the world. But in reality, Zuckerberg is no more powerful than the low-paid content moderators whom Facebook employs to hit the “delete” or “ban” button, since it is neither the Facebook moderators nor Zuckerberg himself who is truly making these decisions. They are just censoring as they are told, in obedience to rules handed down from on high. It is the corporate press and powerful Washington elites who are coercing Facebook and Google to censor in accordance with their wishes and ideology upon pain of punishment in the form of shame, stigma and even official legal and regulatory retaliation.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

 

Ted Nugent
https://twitter.com/i/status/1445152596520579072

 

 

 

 

 

 

Support the Automatic Earth in virustime; donate with Paypal, Bitcoin and Patreon.

 

Oct 022021
 
 October 2, 2021  Posted by at 7:26 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,  61 Responses »


M. C. Escher The Tower of Babel 1928

 

Molnupiravir: Coding For Catastrophe (Nature)
Molnupiravir Faces Execution Obstacles (CTA)
The Vaccine Death Report (Zelenko et al)
You CAN’T Use ‘Cases’ (Denninger)
In a Dark Wood (Kunstler)
Hospitals Should Hire, Not Fire, Nurses with Natural Immunity (Kulldorff)
72% Of Black NYC Residents Are Banned From Entering Restaurants (Fed.)
Fauci Confronted About CDC Claims About “Breakthrough” Infections (ZH)
Myocarditis in VAERS Linked To Covid-19 Injectable Biological Products (SD)
Fully Vaccinated Harvard Business School Shuts Down After Covid Outbreak (TE)
Newsom Makes Vaccines Mandatory For All School Children In California (PM)
Supreme Court Rejects NYC Teachers’ Request To Stop Vaccine Mandate (JTN)
The Looming Energy Crisis: People Are Going To Die This Winter (Blain)
The US Found A ‘Lawful’ Way To Disappear Assange (Cook)

 

 

Pierre Kory:

Merck’s news today is great since patients will have early Rx but also sad given the high cost and lives lost compared to IVM.

Molnupiravir=47% reduction in hospitalization/death while IVM=88% reduction.

 

 

Delta?
https://twitter.com/i/status/1443988637503348737

 

 

Palast

 

 

Published: 13 September 2021

Molnupiravir: Coding For Catastrophe (Nature)

Molnupiravir, a wide-spectrum antiviral that is currently in phase 2/3 clinical trials for the treatment of COVID-19, is proposed to inhibit viral replication by a mechanism known as ‘lethal mutagenesis’. Two recently published studies reveal the biochemical and structural bases of how molnupiravir disrupts the fidelity of SARS-CoV-2 genome replication and prevents viral propagation by fostering error accumulation in a process referred to as ‘error catastrophe’. Despite the reprieve from COVID-19 granted by vaccination programs, SARS-CoV-2 continues to ravage many communities worldwide. Vaccine shortages, public hesitancy and the emergence of new virus variants have hindered public health efforts to prevent the spread of COVID-19.


Furthermore, SARS-CoV-2 is likely to become endemic1, leading to the emergence of vaccine-resistant variants and reinforcing the need to develop antiviral therapeutic agents. Molnupiravir (MK-4482, EIDD-2801) is a candidate antiviral that inhibits viral propagation through lethal mutagenesis by introducing errors in the viral genome. The biochemical and structural basis of how molnupiravir induces lethal mutagenesis has remained largely unexplored. Recently, Götte and colleagues reported biochemical results exploring the antiviral activity of molnupiravir and provided a compelling model to explain the mutagenic patterns observed in coronaviruses exposed to molnupiravir in cell culture2. In this issue of Nature Structural & Molecular Biology, Cramer and colleagues further our understanding of this process by providing biochemical and structural data that reveal how molnupiravir introduces transition mutations into the SARS-CoV-2 genome. Together, the two studies offer complementary and comprehensive views of the mechanism of lethal mutagenesis and provide a platform for rational drug design.

Read more …

January 2021. “..molnupiravir could be metabolised into a precursor of DNA ..”

Molnupiravir Faces Execution Obstacles (CTA)

Ridgeback Biotherapeutics/Merck’s Phase IIa molnupiravir is attractive for outpatient and recently hospitalised Covid-19 patients due to its mechanism and oral administration, experts said. However, many trial success blind spots persist, limiting efficacy judgment, they added. Encouraging preclinical data is yet to translate into humans, and there is potential for lingering severe side effects due to molnupiravir’s mutagenic mechanism, experts noted. While targeting Covid-19 patients in the earlier part of the disease spectrum is logical, the trial designs may blur molnupiravir’s clinical value, they said. In July 2020, Miami, Florida-based Ridgeback and Merck announced they had partnered to advance molnupiravir in Covid-19.

[..]Comparing molnupiravir and Veklury may be inappropriate as they are intended for different patients, Brown added. Veklury is FDA approved in hospitalised patients, although it has a wider emergency use authorisation. Even if molnupiravir is only as potent as Veklury, its oral formulation will boost its clinical value, as it could be used by more people, Shafer said. As much as 80% of all Covid-19 cases are either asymptomatic or mild, with only 20% of patients sick enough to be hospitalised, added Dr Yvonne Maldonado, professor, infectious diseases in pediatrics and health research and policy, Stanford University, California, and a Phase II Avigan trial investigator in asymptomatic or mild Covid-19 patients. Another oral Covid-19 therapy under investigation is Fujifilm Toyama Chemical’s Avigan (favirpiravir), which is also an oral mutagen, Shafer said, but added Avigan’s preclinical and clinical data in Covid-19 are underwhelming so far.

Due to limited data with highly active viral mutagens like molnupiravir, there is concern its mechanism would negatively impact the host, leading to side effects, Swanstrom said. When considering widespread deployment, toxicity is a major issue, said Dr Saye Khoo, professor, pharmacology and therapeutics, University of Liverpool, UK. How it is utilised will depend on its overall toxicity data, added Khoo, who is studying molnupiravir in a Phase I/II basket trial investigating various Covid-19 treatments.

Side effect concerns have been raised about whether molnupiravir could be metabolised into a precursor of DNA, Swanstrom said, explaining it could enter the host cell nucleus, leading to oncogenesis. Mitochondrial toxicity with such a mechanism has been raised in previous investigations in hepatitis B and HIV, added an investigator in a Covid-19 trial recruiting outpatients and recently hospitalised patients. In the 20-day Phase I molnupiravir trial recruiting healthy volunteers, 93.3% of adverse events were mild, with one patient discontinuing due to rash (Painter, W., et al., Medrxiv. 14 December. https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.12.10.20235747).

Molnupiravir is only used in the short term, twice-daily for five days, as opposed to chronic use, Shafer added. Polymerase inhibitor side effects have improved over the years, and while mutagen side effects were a concern in early development in HIV, they have eased in available hepatitis treatments, Brown added. However, due to the need for longer-term safety data, molnupiravir may be limited to patients at high risk of developing severe disease, Swanstrom said.

Read more …

“..the British Office for National Statistics inadvertently revealed that 30,305 people have died within 21 days of having the injection, during the first 6 months of 2021.”

The Vaccine Death Report (Zelenko et al)

In The Netherlands, one of the smallest nations in the European Union, an extraparliamentary research commitee set up a platform for citizens to report vaccine adverse events. This is no initiative from the government and has received no attention whatsoever in the media. The vast majority of the Dutch population is therefore unaware of its existence. Yet, dispite its narrow scope of influence, this private initiative has already received reports of 1,600 deaths and 1,200 health damages, often permanently disabling the people. 3 What if the entire vaccinated population knew about this platform and filed a report? And what if this was also available in the other E.U. countries, that are much larger than The Netherlands?

UK: Shortly before the national vaccination campaign started, the MHRA (Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency) published the following request: ‘The MHRA urgently seeks an Artificial Intelligence (AI) software tool to process the expected high volume of Covid-19 vaccine Adverse Drug Reaction (ADRs) and ensure that no details from the ADRs’ reaction text are missed.’ The British government published a report of the first series of adverse events, including blindness, strokes, miscarriages, heart failure, paralysis, auto immune disease, and more. Shortly after the first wave of immunization over 100,000 adverse events were reported, including 1260 cases of loss of eyesight (including total blindness). The first part of the report praises the vaccines to be the best way to protect people from COVID-19, and then continues to show the incredible destruction these vaccines are causing. The hypocrisy is mindboggling. Also in the United Kingdom the number of miscarriages increased by 366% in only six weeks, for vaccinated mothers.

Furthermore the British Office for National Statistics inadvertently revealed that 30,305 people have died within 21 days of having the injection, during the first 6 months of 2021. And a British scientist with 35 years of experience did an in depth analysis of the British Yellow Card reporting system and found it to be unreliable. ‘We can conclude that the Yellow Card reporting scheme can provide some limited information that may be useful for alerting the UK public to possible adverse effects of the COVID-19 vaccines. However, the initial conception of the scheme as a purely descriptive rather than as an experimental undertaking means that it cannot address the real issues that are of crucial importance to the UK public. These issues are whether there are causal relationships between vaccination with the PF and AZ vaccines and serious adverse effects such as death, and if so, what are the size of these effects.’

Read more …

3 more months of PCR in the US. And what then?

You CAN’T Use ‘Cases’ (Denninger)

Not one lab has ever returned Ct numbers to the tested person. Not even in Florida, where DeSantis issued an Executive Order requiring it. Was there ever any enforcement of that? No. Why did we know this was entirely bogus? Simple: On the CDC’s own math the fall surge — which turned into the Winter Disaster — was epidemiologically impossible. Specifically, look at their mean ratio of infections to case counts and you see the problem; at 6x enough people had the virus for there be no surge. But there was. By the summer this was even more beclowned as on that same data everyone had been infected. But…. there was a surge. Do remember the admitted truth on PCR: A Ct test of 35 or more almost never results in culturable virus.


It breaks down something like this:
Ct<20 = Nearly always you can culture virus.
Ct25 = 50 – 70% of the time you can culture virus.
Ct30 = ~25-30% of the time you can culture virus.
Ct35 = ~4-8% of the time you can culture virus.
Ct40 = Statistically never can you culture virus.

Why is this important? Many people have claimed that viral debris from your infection still means you had it, thus, positive is positive. Nope. This is the worst sort of fraud. At very high Ct numbers the debris could be from contamination at the lab, or between samples. But it could also be from your prior, non-Covid-19 immunity and anyone who is even slightly competent in understanding the immune system knows it. The virus enters through the nose and mouth. The upper respiratory tract is where it first gets into cells — if it gets into cells. Your body has a bevvy of defensive mechanisms to prevent that from happening. Remember that unlike bacteria a virus cannot replicate outside of a living cell. The mucosa in your mouth and nose is not alive. The cells under it are, but it is not.

So if a virus lands in your nose but never gets through the mucosa it will register positive on a PCR test — because it is positive — if the Ct is cranked up high enough. Technically you “got” the virus (you “caught” it) but you were never infected. It is certainly true that some of the people who are “positive” with high Ct numbers are infected and you got them “early”; they will go on to have clinical disease and, if you test them again you will get another positive in a day or two with a much lower Ct. But nobody does that. In addition exactly zero health departments have validated their claimed “infected” counts by coming back to those people with a $5 antibody test two weeks later and looking for IgA, IgM and/or IgG antibodies. IgA may be present and both IgM and likely a weak read of IgG will be present if the person was actually infected at that time. If only IgG is present that infection was not Covid-19; they previously were infected and you lied; their body beat off the incipient infection without impact.

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“..large numbers of health care workers getting kicked out of their jobs will only make it more difficult to care for patients..”

In a Dark Wood (Kunstler)

In upstate New York, WNYT-TV reported yesterday that 200 employees of Albany Med, a large, regional teaching hospital, are placed on seven day’s unpaid leave prior to getting fired for refusing the vaccine. Andrew Cuomo’s replacement, new Governor Kathy Hochul, has blocked unemployment benefits for fired nurses and technicians if they persist in evading the vax. Doctors are included in the mix, too. Of course, large numbers of health care workers getting kicked out of their jobs will only make it more difficult to care for patients — with Covid or any other health problem — so how does this policy help anyone? (Unless you consider that, with fewer staff on-duty, fewer Covid in-patients will be subjected to the medical malpractice of being placed on ventilators and treated with the killer drug Remdesivir.)


Not only has effective early treatment with other drugs been banned from the official medical standards-of-practice across the USA, but mere talk about it has been banned, notably by Google’s YouTube app. This coercion of health care workers is going on all over the country, of course, not just in New York state. These nurses and techs have been working around Covid patients for going on two years, and many of them have gotten the disease, with symptoms or without, conferring natural immunity. So, what is the point of forcing the vaxes on them? It is also a fact that vaccinated people are susceptible to catching the disease, and that, in any case, the vaccinated carry heavier viral loads than the un-vaxed, making them more efficient spreaders. It is also a fact that mass vaccination in the midst of a pandemic promotes the mutation of new variant viruses that increasingly are not affected by the vaccines.

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“By instituting vaccine mandates, university hospitals are now also questioning the existence of natural immunity after Covid disease. This is astonishing.”

Hospitals Should Hire, Not Fire, Nurses with Natural Immunity (Kulldorff)

Among many surprising developments during this pandemic, the most stunning has been the questioning of naturally acquired immunity after a person has had the Covid disease. We have understood natural immunity since at least the Athenian Plague in 430 BC. Here is Thucydides: ‘Yet it was with those who had recovered from the disease that the sick and the dying found most compassion. These knew what it was from experience and had no fear for themselves; for the same man was never attacked twice—never at least fatally.’ – Thucydides We have lived with endemic coronaviruses for at least a hundred years, for which we have long-lasting natural immunity. As expected, we also have natural immunity after Covid-19 disease, as there have been exceedingly few reinfections with serious illness or death, despite a widely circulating virus.

For most viruses, natural immunity is better than vaccine-induced immunity, and that is also true for Covid. In the best study to date, the vaccinated were around 27 times more likely to have symptomatic disease than those with natural immunity, with an estimated range between 13 and 57. With no Covid deaths in either group, both natural and vaccine immunity protect well against death. During the last decade, I have worked closely with hospital epidemiologists. While the role of physicians is to treat patients and make them well, the task of the hospital epidemiologist is to ensure that patients do not get sick while in the hospital, such as catching a deadly virus from another patient or a caretaker. For that purpose, hospitals employ a variety of measures, from frequent hand washing to full infection control regalia when caring for an Ebola patient.

Vaccinations are a key component of these control efforts. For example, two weeks before spleen surgery, patients are given the pneumococcal vaccine to minimize postoperative infections, and most clinical staff are immunized against influenza every year. Infection control measures are especially critical for older frail hospital patients with a weakened immune system. They can become infected and die from a virus that most people would easily survive. A key rationale for immunizing nurses and physicians against influenza is to ensure that they do not infect such patients. How can hospitals best protect their patients from Covid disease? It is an enormously important question, also relevant for nursing homes. There are some obvious standard solutions, such as separating Covid patients from other patients, minimizing staff rotation, and providing generous sick leave for staff with Covid-like symptoms.

Another goal should be to employ staff with the strongest possible immunity against Covid, as they are less likely to catch it and spread it to their patients. This means that hospitals and nursing homes should actively seek to hire staff that have natural immunity from prior Covid disease and use such staff for their most vulnerable patients. Hence, we are now seeing a fierce competition where hospitals and nursing homes are desperately trying to hire people with natural immunity. Well, actually, not. Instead, hospitals are firing nurses and other staff with superior natural immunity while retaining those with weaker vaccine-induced immunity. By doing so, they are betraying their patients, increasing their risk for hospital-acquired infections.

By pushing vaccine mandates, White House chief medical advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci is questioning the existence of natural immunity after Covid disease. In doing so, he is following the lead of CDC director Rochelle Walensky, who questioned natural immunity in a 2020 Memorandum published by The Lancet. By instituting vaccine mandates, university hospitals are now also questioning the existence of natural immunity after Covid disease. This is astonishing.

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“Most of the time, the changes they made hurt blacks more than whites, but that’s beside the point; in liberalism, it’s the effort that counts.”

72% Of Black NYC Residents Are Banned From Entering Restaurants (Fed.)

Democrats’ summer of Black Lives Matter is over. Front-line nurses’ year in the sun has passed. Gone are the COVID cries to evict no one ever for any reason at all. Disparate impact? Never heard of her. It’s 2021 now; we’ve advanced. These aren’t simple proclamations. Go and read a newspaper from September 2020, and then glance at one from this past month. The political debates are nearly unrecognizable, it’s almost impossible to believe that the same people were often making both policies. New York City is a leader in world liberalism. For years — and especially since May 2020 — its politicians have mangled their schools, their parks, their police force, and their courts, all in the name of fighting racism. Most of the time, the changes they made hurt blacks more than whites, but that’s beside the point; in liberalism, it’s the effort that counts.

New York City is also a leader of the world’s COVID cult. New Gov. Kathy Hochul says that if you want to serve God, you must receive the sacrament of vaccination. Mayor Bill de Blasio has decreed that all restaurants must see proof of vaccination before service. There’s the snag: Today in New York City, roughly 72 percent of black residents aged 18-44 have not taken the novel vaccine, meaning now roughly 72 percent of black residents aged 18-44 are banned — banned — from entering dining establishments. Statewide, 53 percent of black residents aren’t vaccinated, compared to only 44 percent of white residents who have declined the shots; yet this week, the state’s governor announced she would use the powers of this unending emergency to fire and replace as many as 72,000 health workers for refusing the vaccine.

In New York City, health-care workers were lauded as both heroes and COVID experts just weeks ago. Most of those workers are women, a plurality are black, and now, thousands of them might be out of jobs. The hospital system never collapsed due to COVID, but it might collapse due to Hochul’s measures to fight it. New York City is not alone in reversing course: Down south in Florida earlier this month, one apartment owner promised to evict any tenants who decline the vaccine. It’s unsafe to be near the unclean, he said. So black mother Jasmine Erby and her two children were given the boot. “There was no loophole, no working with me, no extensions and I literally had to walk away,” Irby told Fox News. “It was either get the shot or get out.”

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“.. the CDC doesn’t even track the breakthrough infections so how do we know that they’re only a small portion and that they’re relatively mild?”

Fauci Confronted About CDC Claims About “Breakthrough” Infections (ZH)

Finally, Eisen Hit Dr. Fauci with a surprise hard ball: She cited “data” collected within her own family, whereby three vaccinated people got COVID and immediately passed it on to two unvaccinated children. Eisen then suggested that the CDC might be “too casual” about breakthough infections, and also questioned “How can the CDC keep saying COVID “breakthrough” infections are rare if they have no data?” To this, Dr. Fauci replied that the CDC is scrambling to change this, and even hinted that more data on the true rate of breakthrough infections would likely soon arrive. “Three vaccinated people got Covid in my house two unvaccinated children got it…are you too casual about the limitations of the vaccine? It seems to me these breakthroughs are happening and they’re happening regularly. You can get it and transmit it and the government hasn’t been warning about that,” Eisen said.

“Oh yes we have and let me get you the facts. If you are an unvaccinated person you have 11x the likelihood of hospitalization…if you look at the people who have died from COVID-19, overwhelmingly they have been unvaccinated,” Dr Fauci Fauci adds that “over 90%” who have been unvaccinated – but of course that vast majority of deaths occurred before the vaccine rollout even started, making this statement slightly misleading. As for determining how many unvaccinated have died since the program began, it’s not exactly clear since this data wasn’t being tracked. Though deaths and hospitalizations have fallen since vaccination rates have risen, but there’s still many questions about whether the young and health actually benefit. Fortunately, CNBC released this clip.

As for the CDC tracking breakthrough infections, Eisen also pressed Dr. Fauci about the fact that “the CDC says on its website that infections occur among…unvaccinated…but the CDC doesn’t even track the breakthrough infections so how do we know that they’re only a small portion and that they’re relatively mild?” Dr. Fauci had nothing really to say to this except to admit she was of course correct while offering a flimsy excuse about the CDC working on it. “Well in the past the CDC has not tracked real or asymptomatic infections, but there are studies being done that would give the kind of data you’re talking about.” “And with the booster program we’re rolling out, we hope to see an improved effect. Israeli data have shown that when you give an at risk person a booster shot, they’re chances of being hospitalizations drop.”

The interview with a question from CNBC host Wilfred Frost about the risks of any future variants, to which Dr. Fauci responded with the typical fear-mongering. “I’ll give an answer that’s totally consistent with what I’ve said before, is the likelihood of seeing something worse…is completely in our own control…if we allow the virus to freely circulate, particularly among unvaccinated people, you give the virus a greater possibility of producing a variant that could create some trouble for our vaccines.” But overall, the interview makes clear: the media is starting to get curious about the growing reports of breakthrough infections of public officials like Brett Kavanaugh (whose diagnosis was announced today) to family members and friends. Whatever it is, the 90%+ rate they insist on seems increasingly like a stretch.

Read more …

JessicaRosePhD, MSc, BSc1; Peter A.McCulloughMD, MPH1

Myocarditis in VAERS Linked To Covid-19 Injectable Biological Products (SD)

Following the global rollout and administration of the Pfizer Inc./BioNTech BNT162b2 and Moderna mRNA-1273 vaccines on December 17, 2020, in the United States, and of the Janssen Ad26.COV2.S product on April 1st, 2021, in an unprecedented manner, hundreds of thousands of individuals have reported adverse events (AEs) using the Vaccine Adverse Events Reports System (VAERS). We used VAERS data to examine cardiac AEs, primarily myocarditis, reported following injection of the first or second dose of the COVID-19 injectable products. Myocarditis rates reported in VAERS were significantly higher in youths between the ages of 13 to 23 (p<0.0001) with 80% occurring in males.

Within 8 weeks of the public offering of COVID-19 products to the 12-15-year-old age group, we found 19 times the expected number of myocarditis cases in the vaccination volunteers over background myocarditis rates for this age group. In addition, a 5-fold increase in myocarditis rate was observed subsequent to dose 2 as opposed to dose 1 in 15-year-old males. A total of 67% of all cases occurred with BNT162b2. Of the total myocarditis AE reports, 6 individuals died (1.1%) and of these, 2 were under 20 years of age – 1 was 13. These findings suggest a markedly higher risk for myocarditis subsequent to COVID-19 injectable product use than for other known vaccines, and this is well above known background rates for myocarditis.

COVID-19 injectable products are novel and have a genetic, pathogenic mechanism of action causing uncontrolled expression of SARS-CoV-2 spike protein within human cells. When you combine this fact with the temporal relationship of AE occurrence and reporting, biological plausibility of cause and effect, and the fact that these data are internally and externally consistent with emerging sources of clinical data, it supports a conclusion that the COVID-19 biological products are deterministic for the myocarditis cases observed after injection.

Read more …

At least now we know where The Science does not live.

Fully Vaccinated Harvard Business School Shuts Down After Covid Outbreak (TE)

Harvard Business School (HBS) in Boston, Massachusetts has just experienced a large coronavirus outbreak despite more than 90 percent of students and staff being fully vaccinated. The school, which has a population of more than 1700 students, had a significant Covid-19 outbreak after cases started rising in September. This news comes as 95 percent of students and 96 percent of staff at the school being reported as fully vaccinated, yet this did not appear to stop Covid from making its way through those on campus. Two-thirds of all cases recorded in September came from students. A statement from the HBS said that Covid-19 cases among MBA students surged by 20 per cent in just three days.

Dean Srikant Datar of HBS said: “Our positivity rate is 12 times that of the rest of Harvard. These distressing figures are so high that they have attracted the scrutiny of local public health officials.” To avoid further scrutiny from the public and to preserve Harvard’s image, Datar and several of the university’s administrators have announced that teaching will be conducted online for almost all students until the end of October. This change affects almost all first-year and some second-year courses. This is one of the first instances of a major university halting in-person teaching due to Covid-19 outbreaks. The university made its decision after receiving advice from public health officials employed by the city and state.

HBS also announced that it will be increasing the number of Covid tests it forces upon students to three per week. Previously, the university’s requirement was for fully vaccinated students to get tested once per week and unvaccinated students to get tested twice per week. Mark Cautela, spokesman and head of communication for HBS, said in a statement that Harvard is also requesting students to avoid participating in social gatherings with anybody outside of their households and instead socialise with friends online.

Read more …

The Science has died.

Newsom Makes Vaccines Mandatory For All School Children In California (PM)

California Gov. Gavin Newsom announced on Friday that all California school children will be required to be vaccinated against Covid-19 as soon as soon as the FDA approval process is complete. “CA will require our kids to get the COVID-19 vaccine to come to school,” Newsom announced on Twitter. “This will go into effect following full FDA approval.” “Our schools already require vaccines for measles, mumps and more. Why? Because vaccines work.” “This is about keeping our kids safe & healthy,” the governor said. This is the first vaccine mandate for K-12 school children in the US. Currently, the FDA allows for children 12 years old and up to receive one of the COVID-19 vaccines which have been approved for use in the US. Teachers and staff will not be required to be vaccinated. Children are at substantially lower risk to COVID than any other demographic. While there have been concerns noted about the risks of vaccines for young people, the FDA has moved ahead with approvals, and is likely to approve lower doses for the under 11 age group.

Read more …

Headline is a little misleading. Sotomayor, on her own, decided the Court will not take up the case. There was no vote. Pass the hot potato?

You would think with all these mandates flying around, they should rule on the legality.

Supreme Court Rejects NYC Teachers’ Request To Stop Vaccine Mandate (JTN)

The Supreme Court on Friday declined to block New York City’s vaccine mandate for public schools following a petition brought by a group of teachers. According to The Hill, the group of New York City teachers asked for an emergency injunction on Thursday, following a lower court’s ruling that permitted the city’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate to take effect this coming Monday. The group argued that many teachers would lose their jobs if the Supreme Court didn’t intervene. Justice Sonia Sotomayor—who is responsible for emergency matters originating from New York—denied the request without comment.


According to USA Today, teachers had until 5 p.m. on Friday to provide proof of at least one shot of the vaccine. Failure to do so could result in suspension without pay or potential termination on Monday, Oct. 4. This marks the second time the court has refused to take up a vaccine mandate case. The first one was from a group of students who sued Indiana University over its vaccine requirements. Justice Amy Coney Barret rejected the student’s petition and declined their request for emergency relief. More lawsuits from teachers are expected [..]

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Nordstream 2.

The Looming Energy Crisis: People Are Going To Die This Winter (Blain)

For many months myself and many of the investors I work with have become increasingly concerned at the growing instability and insecurity of energy markets. The 4 times spike in Gas prices this year has been a shocking wake-up call, highlighting energy insecurity in Europe and particularly the UK. Gas prices will remain elevated for months to come. The consequences are going to be brutal – and fatal for some. Energy – whether derived from fossil fuels, nuclear or renewables – is a commodity and the critical thing about commodities is: “You can’t print commodities like you can print money. The rules are not the same,” says my good friend and head of commodities at Shard, Ashley Boolell. Commodities are volatile and dangerous. Oil has doubled in recent months. But the thing about Gold, Silver, Palladium and copper prices is; no matter how volatile they are, they are simply investment opportunities or traps, and are unlikely to kill us.

Energy is different. It can kill us. That was conclusively demonstrated earlier this year in Texas. A swift series of winter storms crashed the Texan grid when gas infrastructure failed in the cold, renewables weren’t delivering, and the deregulation of its energy system had delinked Texas from both US power Grids – making it difficult to import energy. Over 200 people died as a result of power outages. Fast forward to this winter, and the UK and Europe are in the direct firing line of the coming energy storm. The security of energy supplies has never looked less certain. In the UK, neglected storage means we have the capacity to story 3-4 days of Gas. The recent collapse in sterling has been linked to the panic over Petrol supplies, escalating and cascading supply chain failures impacting industry and growing woes blamed on Brexit. I would add questions about how the UK’s status as a first world economy with zero energy security will line up.

How has this happened? Why? Well… that’s a long tale… But, it will be mightily embarrassing for the Boris Johnson Government if the first UK power outages occur during the COP26 Climate Circus in Glasgow in November. COP26 has driven the Government’s agenda and ambition to be seen as more green, more carbon neutral and more ESG than anyone else. I’ve heard tales of cabinet ministers throwing sweary hissy fits when asked to support policies that don’t immediately square with green policies perceived as vote winners. As I’ve written many times – ESG is well intentioned, but perhaps the most dangerous force in Economics today.

Investment managers rely on people giving them money to manage. That is why every single fund manager on the planet is fixated on polishing their green credentials, demonstrating how they are funding ESG compliant investments, and eschewing anything even vaguely linked to hydrocarbons. It is also why Saudi Arabia is polishing its credentials by improbably launching and successfully selling a Green Bond. The result is a chronic failure of common sense across the investment industry. Fund managers claim to be investing in our futures. If that is true – how do they expect the world can transition seamlessly from dirty hydrocarbons to clean renewables overnight? It takes 20 years to get planning and build a nuclear power station – while wind is proving fickle, unreliable, far less efficient and difficult to maintain.

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“Given the many years, spent under both Obama and Trump, trying to shore up this claim by the most digitally advanced states in the world, it comes as something of a surprise to learn that they came up with nothing.”

The US Found A ‘Lawful’ Way To Disappear Assange (Cook)

The Yahoo report makes clear too that the surveillance operation against Assange and Wikileaks intensified dramatically after Snowden released his confidential documents in 2013 in collaboration with reporter Glenn Greenwald. The Snowden files showed that the US had begun expanding its ambition to use new digital technology to covertly surveil the rest of the world. Now it was increasingly turning that technological prowess inwards to covertly surveil its own population. A transparency organisation like Wikileaks, it quickly became obvious, was a major threat to the US intelligence services’ plans. According to Yahoo’s sources, it was the Obama administration that began surveilling Wikileaks more intensively and threw the net wider to expose its networks.

The CIA was already centrally involved, creating a special “Wikileaks team” that worked closely with other friendly spy agencies – including one can presume the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing states that also comprise Canada, the UK, Australia and New Zealand. (One official, William Evanina, who recently retired as a top US counterintelligence official, notes the key role the Five Eyes group played in Assange’s case.) The goal, Yahoo was told by Evanina, its main named source, was to “tie [Wikileaks] back to hostile state intelligence services”. In other words, the aim was to suggest not that Assange was interested in transparency or acting out of principle but that he wanted to undermine the US on behalf of a hostile foreign power.

Assange’s fate was sealed within the Obama administration in summer 2016 when Wikileaks released a cache of Democratic party emails that cast Obama’s chosen successor, Hillary Clinton, in a damning light and showed that the party had rigged its election procedures to stop her main challenger, Bernie Sanders, from winning. As an aside, the Yahoo report notes that the idea of kidnapping Assange – in violation of Ecuador and the UK’s sovereignty – actually preceded Pompeo’s arrival at the CIA. Despite Yahoo’s focus on Pompeo, it was actually Obama and the Democratic party’s thirst for vengeance that paved the way for Trump’s appointee to have viable options of either prosecuting Assange for espionage or abducting him. Obama’s officials immediately tarred Assange as conspiring with Donald Trump, Clinton’s rival for the presidential election.

He was thereby dragged into an establishment conspiracy theory, Russiagate, that claimed Trump was serving as a puppet of the Kremlin. Given the many years, spent under both Obama and Trump, trying to shore up this claim by the most digitally advanced states in the world, it comes as something of a surprise to learn that they came up with nothing. Evidence of Wikileaks collusion with Russia appears never to have surfaced, even though it became an implicit, driving assumption behind the Russiagate claims. One unusually honest official, Robert Litt, a former general counsel of the Office of the Director for National Intelligence, observed to Yahoo of the claims made by Pompeo that Assange was acting on behalf of the Russians: “Based on the information that I had seen, I thought he was out over his skis on that.”

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